As I'm sure most of you are aware, the GOES East satellite images have been experiencing some problems over the last week.
On Tuesday December 4th, the GOES-12 satellite experienced an anomaly in spacecraft attitude following a North-South station keeping maneuver; initial efforts to restore GOES-12 to a normal on-orbit mode were unsuccessful. As a result, the older GOES-10 satellite was reassigned from South American operations to replace the GOES-12 satellite as the operational GOES East satellite on the following day. You can read more about the differences between the GOES-10 and GOES-12 satellites here. This switch from the GOES-12 to the GOES-10 seems to have affected the Water Vapor images more than any other of the GOES East imagery.
On Friday December 7th, the following was stated by NOAA:
Engineers have confirmed the cause of the attitude disturbances on GOES-12 that started after the North/South maneuver. We believe there is a leak in the oxidizer line of thruster 2B. We were successful yesterday in isolating the thruster. This evening, we are planning to go into normal attitude control mode. Engineers will be monitoring the spacecraft through out the weekend. On Monday we will determine whether to begin normal imaging and sounding operations. GOES-10 continues to support the East satellite imaging and sounding operations. Since yesterday GOES-10 GVAR and all auxiliary services, including EMWIN, were broadcast simultaneously through GOES-10 and GOES-12.
Today I was able to reach Brian Hughes at NOAA and inquire about the problems with the Water Vapor images. This was his response:
We are having difficulties with the GVAR signal from GOES-10. All throughout the weekend, we've seen numerous dropouts and missed images, because the receiving antenna we are using is having problems staying on the GOES-10 signal. This is causing interruptions in the NOAAPort processing. We hope to have GOES-12 back by mid week.
So it looks like the Water Vapor images will continue to be affected until NOAA gets GOES-12 back up and running, hopefully sometime this week.