Topic: Limited NOAA-20 contacts during South Pole McMurdo Black Island Maintenance Period

Date/Time Issued: December 7, 2018 2210 UTC

Product(s) or Data Impacted: NOAA-20 Data Timeliness

Date/Time of Initial Impact: December 11, 2018, 0430 UTC

Date/Time of Expected End: M-BDecember 15, 2018, 1350 UTC M-B

Length of Outage: M-BN/A

Details/Specifics of Change: Due to critical maintenance activities at Black Island scheduled during certain maintenance windows on December 11-15, 2018, NOAA-20 will periodically not be able to utilize the McMurdo Antarctic Data Acquisition Station. The Troll Station in Antarctica will be utilized as the backup during the maintenance period where possible. NOAA-20 stored mission data (SMD) contacts in the southern hemisphere will be curtailed for several orbits each day when maintenance at Black Island is ongoing. No data will be lost. However, during periods where a southern hemisphere contact is not possible, the timeliness of some NOAA-20 orbits will be impacted.

Provided below are the NOAA-20 orbits that will not have a southern hemisphere contact during the maintenance period and will require full orbit data dumps at Svalbard:

December 11, 2018: 5503, 5504, 5505, and 5506 - between 0430 UTC and 1256 UTC

December 12, 2018: 5517 and 5518 - between 0421 UTC and 0907 UTC

December 14, 2018: 5545, 5546, 5547, 5548, and 5549 - between 0333 UTC and 1340 UTC

December 15, 2018: 5559, 5560, 5561, 5562, and 5563 - between 0315 UTC and 1321 UTC

High Rate Data (direct-readout) users are not affected by this activity.

Contact Information for Further Information: ESPC Operations at ESPCOperations@noaa.gov and 301-817-3880

Web Site(s) for applicable information: N/A

This message was sent by ESPC.Notification@noaa.gov. You have been sent this and other notifications because you have opted in to receive it. If for any reason, you wish to unsubscribe, please contact ESPC Help Desk at ESPCOperations@noaa.gov or (301) 817-3880. Please note: it may take up to two business days to process your unsubscribe request.