Agency Retires Satellite that Aided in Rescue of Thousands

This image is from the last operational morning orbit of NOAA-17 on May 26, 2007.

Washington — The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has retired a satellite that provided data for nearly 11 years to help predict weather and climate patterns and save lives in search-and-rescue operations.

The NOAA-17 Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellite (POES) was one of NOAA's longest-operating spacecraft, which have a typical lifespan of three years. The shutdown will not cause any data gap, as NOAA-17 was being used as a back-up satellite and was removed from service after several key systems on board became inoperable.

NOAA-17 was part of the international Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking (SARSAT) network of satellites. SARSAT, which began in 1982, has rescued more than 33,000 people worldwide by detecting distress signals from emergency beacons, NOAA said.

Deactivating NOAA-17 also heralds a significant change for polar-orbiting satellite operations worldwide. NOAA now exclusively flies afternoon orbit spacecraft while its key international partner, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), flies mid-morning orbit spacecraft.

Sharing data, NOAA said, saves money and helps produce more accurate and uniform data for forecasters. Through the Initial Joint Polar System agreement, NOAA and EUMETSAT established a shared satellite system by exchanging instruments and coordinating the operations of their polar-orbiting satellites to provide operational meteorological and environmental forecasting and global climate monitoring services worldwide.

NOAA will continue operating several POES spacecraft — NOAA-15, NOAA-16, NOAA-18 and NOAA-19 — in addition to its newest polar-orbiting satellite, Suomi NPP, launched October 28, 2011. NOAA’s POES spacecraft fly a lower, pole-to-pole orbit capturing atmospheric data from space that feed NOAA’s weather and climate prediction models.

NOAA began the deactivation process of NOAA-17 on February 18, with the final shutdown occurring April 10. Launched in June 2002, NOAA-17 made 55,000 orbits of the globe, traveling more than 2.4 billion kilometers while collecting huge amounts of valuable temperature, moisture and image data.

“NOAA-17 helped our forecasters see the early development of severe weather from tornadoes and snow storms to hurricanes, including the busiest hurricane season on record — 2005. It also tracked subtle changes in the environment that signaled the onset of drought and wildfire conditions,” said Mary Kicza, assistant administrator of NOAA’s Satellite and Information Service. “NOAA-17’s long life is a credit to the engineers who built and operated it and the technology that sustained it. Although we say farewell to NOAA-17, we still operate a dependable fleet of satellites that continue to provide crucial data.”

NOAA and its partners at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration are continuing to build the next generation of polar-orbiting satellites, the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), which is scheduled to launch the JPSS-1 satellite in 2017.