US Legacy Weather Satellites Being Decommissioned

The remaining older satellites in a constellation identified earlier this year as being in end-of-life status, are now being decommissioned by the US government. 

As the US government had announced previously, the remaining satellites in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's legacy constellation of Polar Operational Environmental Studies are in the process of being decommissioned. The POES system satellite known as NOAA-15 was to be taken out of service on the 12th of August and another, NOAA-19, on the 19th of the month. Earlier this year, both were declared in the End of Life stage, along with a third constellation satellite, NOAA-18, which was decommissioned in June. For years, these satellites were relied upon by many for vital weather data via their 137 MHz APT transmissions, providing data used in monitoring the environment, forest fires, volcanic eruptions and global vegetation.

“Direct users should make plans to discontinue use of POES data.”

— NOAA

Although previous reports said that the satellites' transmissions would continue, an article on the RTL-SDR website said that the transmitters will be turned off. The end-of-life status means they are no longer eligible for repair or recovery efforts and NOAA advises that they should not be considered reliable sources of information for critical or emergency purposes. None of the satellites are scheduled for deorbiting.

Joint India-Us Satellite Eyes Natural Disasters

An unprecedented joint satellite project between the Indian Space Research Organisation and NASA is giving researchers the hope of better studying the Earth's climate and helping improve responses to natural disasters by monitoring the most subtle changes on Earth, including in its glaciers and wetlands.

The satellite is known as NISAR, the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar mission. Its launch aboard an ISRO spacecraft on the 30th of July from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre sent it on its mission to send microwaves to collect data from different surfaces on the planet. When processed, the data will be visible in an exceptionally high resolution. An estimated 80 terabytes of data will be collected daily. Scientists have said that the method has "unprecedented accuracy."   Researchers and governments around the world will be able to view the data via a cloud platform where they will have open access.

Hams Decode SSMIS Satellite Data Removed by DoD, NOAA

SatDump now features software which will decode data transmitted by the Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder (SSMIS) onboard defense meteorological satellites. The release from SatDump comes after the US Department of Defense announced that data from the satellites would no longer be made available to the public.

Lead developer and ham radio operator Alan Antoine said the US authorities were turning off the online distribution of real time data while the satellite passes over the US stations at Wallops Island, Virginia, and Fairbanks, Alaska.

Access to the latest versions of SatDump are available on GitHub - https://github.com/SatDump/SatDump