Thursday, January 22, 2015

Yesterday's Maneuver and Today's Weather in Las Cruces

Yesterday at 1950 UTC (2:50 p.m. ET) SDO did Momentum Maneuver #21. Science data may not be available for 20 minutes on either side of the thruster firing.

There is heavy snow at the White Sands Complex near Las Cruces, NM. About 6" of snow has fallen so far. Snow can cause the Ka-band science downlink to fade, and it completely faded at 1815 UTC (1:15 p.m. ET) and has not yet returned at 1915 UTC (2;15 p.m. ET). The S-band link is not affected by the snow and is still being received. When the snowfall abates we will again receive the science data.

Update 23-Jan-2015: Normal science data flow was restarted at 2204 UTC yesterday (5:04 p.m. ET). Many thanks to the people who cleaned the snow off the antennas!