Scientists are “working to evaluate the extent of the injury, however it’s extreme.”
Bad Flood
A burst water pipe has wreaked havoc on information despatched by a pair of NASA spacecraft — the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) — that are tens of 1000’s and a whole bunch of miles away from Earth, respectively.
And no, the four-inch cooling water line wasn’t hooked up to both of them when it burst on November 26. The incident occurred on the SDO Joint Science Operations Center (JSOC) at Stanford University in California, based on a current replace, forcing scientists to close down the processing of information from quite a few SDO and IRIS scientific devices.
“The Stanford JSOC workforce is working to evaluate the extent of the injury, however it’s extreme,” the replace reads. “Science information processing” will “be down for an prolonged size of time.”
But there is a silver lining. Since the “information seize methods for all three devices stay purposeful,” no incoming information is “anticipated to be misplaced.”
Pied Piper
The pipe, which sends cooling water via a server room at Stanford, burst and “prompted main flooding” in addition to “intensive water injury,” based on the JSOC workforce.
“At this level, it’s unclear how lengthy it can take to evaluate the injury, restore the gear, and full restoration,” reads an FAQ appended to the replace. “We do know that the injury is intensive and [repairs] won’t be accomplished till 2025.”
The IRIS spacecraft launched in June 2013 and has been serving to scientists research the stream of plasma into the Sun’s corona and heliosphere utilizing a high-frame-rate UV imaging spectrometer.
The SDO, which launched in 2010, was designed to check how photo voltaic exercise causes area climate, the situations attributable to the Sun releasing a barrage of charged particles streaming throughout the photo voltaic system.
Fortunately, whereas the flood will drastically delay information processing, the spacecraft are nonetheless in a position to beam information again residence as anticipated.
Besides, it is also quite a bit simpler to deal with a burst water pipe in a server room again on Earth than it’s to restore a spacecraft 1000’s of miles away.
More on photo voltaic spacecraft: Spacecraft Takes Close Up Video of the Sun, Revealing Otherworldly Hellscape
