Three weeks after being launched into orbit around Earth's poles, the NOAA-17 weather satellite and its onboard instruments have undergone over 100 tests, allowing NASA to deliver the healthy spacecraft to NOAA as planned.

Illustration of NOAA-17 in orbit. Photo: NASA

"The NOAA-17 satellite is working beautifully," said Karen Halterman, NASA's project manager for the polar-orbiting operational environmental satellite program.

The spacecraft was launched by an Air Force Titan 2 rocket on June 24 from Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Built by Lockheed Martin, NOAA-17 is the third in a series of five polar orbiting weather satellites with improved imaging and atmospheric sounding capabilities that will operate to the end of this decade.

NOAA-17 will replace a sister-craft launched four years ago, ensuring an uninterrupted flow of data such as imagery, temperature measurements and atmospheric profiles, the building blocks of weather forecasts. The satellites also build long-term databases for climate monitoring and global change studies.

NASA and NOAA engineers performed a series of over 100 on-orbit verification tests since the launch to establish a satellite performance baseline designed to characterize all aspects of instrument and spacecraft operation. The information provides NOAA with a database to support product development and performance monitoring during the operational phase of the mission.

This same data provides NASA with valuable insight into overall spacecraft subsystem and instrument interaction, so that enhancements and/or ground test modifications may be applied, if appropriate, to later satellites, NOAA-N, and N Prime.

Both government agencies say that all post-launch spacecraft subsystem and instrument deployments were successful. All instruments have been turned on and detailed analysis of data from the entire spacecraft continues, with no major anomalies identified. The on-orbit verification testing primarily focused on instrument calibration will continue through approximately 45 days after launch. About 30 days after that, the satellite will be declared operational.

"We're extremely pleased with the success of the verification process, and look forward to a successful mission for NOAA-17," said Mike Mignogno, NOAA's polar program manager. "This success is due to the professionalism of a large team of NASA, NOAA and contractor personnel."

"The primary contractors are Lockheed Martin, ITT, Aerojet, Ball Aerospace, Panametrics and L3 Communications," Halterman said. "We also have international partners from the U.K., France and Canada. All are to be congratulated for their significant contributions in achieving our joint goal of success for the NOAA-17 mission."

The direct broadcast of Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer instrument data is providing imagery to scientific, commercial and educational groups throughout the world. Once NOAA-17 is fully operational, the search and rescue instruments will continue to support a global community that has established ground stations that "listen" for distress beacons relayed through the NOAA polar and Russian COSPAS satellites.