Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-13 (GOES-13), which monitors weather conditions in the eastern part of US, has been temporarily shutdown due to technical problems and replaced with spare satellite GOES-14.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a scientific agency that handles the operations of GOES satellites, said engineers shutdown GOES-13 services after experiencing problems with images and sounds over several days.
GOES-14 will now remain the primary satellite orbiting over the Atlantic basin and continental US until the image and sound issues with GOES-13 have been rectified, NOAA said.
The $500m GOES-13 satellite, also called GOES East, was launched into the space in May 2006. However, it was only from 2010 that it began to be regularly used for monitoring weather systems across the eastern US.
Since then, it has been orbiting the Earth at a distance of 22,300 miles above the equator.
GOES-14 was launched in 2009, and kept in a storage orbit as a spare satellite.
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By GlobalDataIn addition to monitoring weather systems, the GOES-13 and the later versions transmit signals from emergency beacons and monitor solar activity during sun storms.
The scientific agency has said that there would be a gap of at least one year between the orbiting satellite’s design lifetime and the launch date of its replacement, which means that there would be only one orbiting satellite at one point of time rather than the usual two.
The first GOES satellite was launched into space in 1974.
Image: An artistic rendering of GOES-13 satellite, which has suffered technical problems with images and sounds for the last several days. Photo: NASA.
