The Air Force on July 25 said a weather satellite that stopped responding to commands in February is not repairable and that it wouldn’t take further action toward recovery.
The Air Force anomaly team determined there was a power failure with in the command and control (C2) system of Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Flight 19 (DMSP-19) affecting onboard cryptographic equipment. Due to this failure, the service said commands are unable to reach the command processor.
Both the “A” side and “B” side of the C2 system failed, the Air Force said, eliminating the possibility of commanding via a backup command path. A power failure, as well as an interface failure, resulted in the loss of both command paths to the control unit.
The satellite is still providing real-time tactical data to users, but data received will begin to degrade as the satellite’s pointing accuracy degrades. The satellite remains in a safe and stable configuration and there have been no ejection, or breakup-type, events. The Air Force operations team is still in contact with the vehicle and will continue to monitor and gather telemetry as the vehicle remains pointed toward earth.
There is no impact, at this time, to the Defense Department core weather sensing mission and the DMSP constellation remains able to support mission requirements through resilient systems and processes. DMSP Flight-17 is now assigned as one of two primary constellation satellites to reduce any potential impact to users. The other primary satellite is DMSP-18. The constellation continues to provide weather and atmospheric data to users.
DMSP is developed by Lockheed Martin [LMT]. DMSP-19, the latest satellite of the constellation, was launched April 3, 2014.