Scientists will not be capable of course of a lot of the info gathered by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and IRIS spacecraft for some time, because of a burst water pipe.
That pipe — a 4-inch-wide (10 centimeters) cooling water line in a server room at Stanford University in California that is residence to the SDO Joint Science Operations Center (JSOC) — burst on Nov. 26.
“This prompted main flooding within the constructing and intensive water injury within the lab that homes the machines that course of and distribute knowledge from the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) and Atmospheric Imaging Array (AIA) devices and from the IRIS spacecraft,” JSOC staff members wrote in an replace on Nov. 27.
“At this level, it’s unclear how lengthy it should take to evaluate the injury, restore the tools, and full restoration,” they added. “We do know that the injury is intensive and [repairs] won’t be accomplished till 2025.”
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HMI and AIA are two of SDO’s three science devices. Data collected by the third instrument, the Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment (EVE), aren’t affected by the latest flooding, based on the replace.
The IRIS (Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph) sun-studying probe launched to Earth orbit in June 2013. SDO has been observing our star, and serving to scientists higher perceive how photo voltaic exercise impacts life on Earth, since 2010.
The server-room flooding is not disastrous; it does not have an effect on the operation of SDO and IRIS, each of that are doing effective in Earth orbit.
“Data acquisition is continuing nominally and no lack of new or historic knowledge is presently anticipated,” the JSOC staff wrote within the replace. “However, the info acquisition and distribution system is presently not capable of course of new knowledge (previous November 26, 2024), so there shall be a major delay within the supply of that knowledge.”