Goes-19 weather satellite enters Safe Hold mode

https://www.spaceweather.gov/news/goes-19-safe-hold

by yabones • 7 days ago

178 92 7 days ago

qwertox• 7 days ago

Better link: https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/operations/goes/status.html

isaacdl• 7 days ago

I disagree. That just shows GOES-19 as "green", whatever that means. The OP link is also not very informative, but this link is even less so.

longwave• 7 days ago

The outage list at the top is up to date, but the main status page is nearly three months old - the last updated date at the end is April 20, 2026.

dabluecaboose9• 7 days ago

Please note: This status information on this website is generally updated on a monthly basis. Recent outages and anomalies on data flow are highlighted at the top of the page.

lolc• 7 days ago

https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/#datafile-3

ImJasonH• 7 days ago

https://www.nola.com/news/hurricane/weather-satellite-goes-1... explains a bit more what this is, and what this means.

The main NOAA satellite for tracking Atlantic, Gulf Coast hurricanes is out until further notice
GOES-19 is the main instrument used to identify tropical waves as they strengthen and move over the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, providing real-time tracking for forecasting.

venzaspa• 7 days ago

As an aside, I'm always surprised how US Gov websites look like they've been made in Dreamweaver in about 2006. Not even seemingly with a emphasis on usability either.

kube-system• 7 days ago

The ones that look old are old. The USG has newer design systems that you'll see used on many of the websites that have been redesigned more recently: https://designsystem.digital.gov/

This admin gutted both NOAAs budget and workforce so a website redesign is probably low priority at the moment.

dylan604• 7 days ago

Sites like NASA's APOD have not changed by design. So many third parties have been built up around sites that any change [w|c]ould break so much for no effective gain. Same holds true when people ask why things like NOTAMs and even NOAA's alerts are formatted the way they are.

dabluecaboose9• 7 days ago

While it may not be flashy, I personally find the GOES sites extremely useful. Things are often simply placed at obvious and expected URLs, so scraping or monitoring is extremely easy.

I wrote the script that provides the GOES NavSum [1] and it pretty much just builds a standardized text file and drops it in the folder. The neat thing is that this makes it really easy to programmatically scrape and parse the data.

I wrote a personal script at one point that would download the GOES-EAST CONUS image and both EAST and WEST full disk images and composite them into a wallpaper. At one point my server had 500GB of archived GOES imagery. I liked to joke with my former coworkers that I could report image anomalies before they notice because my desktop wallpaper would change every 10 minutes.

[1] https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/resources/cemscs/navsum.txt

xd1936• 7 days ago

Maybe if the UX was nicer, you wouldn't need to write scrapers and parsers and could just use their site.

ranger207• 7 days ago

Hey, I have a script for updating my background too! I'm not archiving the old images though, but I've thought about it to make some cool animations

iberator• 7 days ago

make torrent of it

getpost• 7 days ago

There's an app that updates the desktop https://downlinkapp.com/

pdntspa• 7 days ago

Why must everything look and be modern

Peanuts99• 6 days ago

The counter to this is the UK.Gov website. Very simple and basic, modern (maybe) but very accessible. Government websites should put accessibility over everything else.

kevin_thibedeau• 7 days ago

You can thank AccuWeather for nerfing any funding for site modernization. I'm surprised the tiled radar map hasn't had the Biden performance fixes reverted.

queuebert2• 7 days ago

The link OP submitted appears to be a webpage displaying a screenshot of another web page, and the image aspect ratio has been altered. It's so comically bad it had to be on purpose, or someone is doing their web dev in MS Word.

Edit: I think actually it's a screenshot of a screenshot even, and this appears to be the entire design of spaceweather.gov. What in the holy heck is going on there? This has to be a top 10 worst website designs of all time.

bityard• 7 days ago

Lots of the web still looks like this when you step outside the comfort zone of big tech search engines, content streaming sites, and social media.

jubilanti• 7 days ago

A safehold is like maintenance mode, shutting down all non-essential systems, after it detects something is wrong. Doesn't necessarily mean it is gone for good, but not a good sign.

delichon• 7 days ago

What is it that the space aliens don't want us to see? The obvious conclusion is that they are hiding their invasion fleet arrivals inside of hurricanes. The proof will be when the system comes back online and only permits us to see ordinary weather.

throwway120385• 7 days ago

We really need to finish the Gollop Chamber.

dabluecaboose9• 7 days ago

They're concerned because GOES-19 deployed with the newest Rothschild Space Weather Laser, which could disrupt their atmospheric camouflage

malfist• 7 days ago

What would a space hurricane look like?

ck22• 7 days ago

is this old cache?

* https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES19/ABI/CONUS/GEOCOLOR/2...

* https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES19/ABI/CONUS/GEOCOLOR/G...

dabluecaboose9• 7 days ago

Looking at the timestamp, that's from yesterday. Nominal product delivery happens ~every 10 minutes.

dabluecaboose9• 7 days ago

Former GOES engineer here. At this point I'd almost be surprised if 19 didn't have something go wrong. We had issues on almost every other satellite. GOES-17 had the loop heat pipe anomaly(Supposedly from someone stepping on it in the cleanroom...), GOES-15 (IIRC) had a micrometeorite strike, and GOES-13 had a fuel tank anomaly right before deorbit.

GOES-16 and GOES-17 are on-orbit spares, so in the extremely unlikely event of a total failure there's at least another spacecraft on-orbit ready to take up station.

That said, I have every faith in the GOES team to get to the bottom of this. They're the best, and I often wish I was back there working with them.

fishgoesblub• 7 days ago

Supposedly from someone stepping on it in the cleanroom

I would be too embarrassed to return to work if I did that.

pooloo• 7 days ago

How do they track that? Is there a log book where someone has to write to?

"Observed EMP555 step on loop heat pipe. Conducted visual inspection of the affected area; no damage found, pipe remains nominal."

Rygian• 7 days ago

From now on, every time I see the word "anomaly" I will assume it is an euphemism for "someone stepped on it".

dabluecaboose9• 6 days ago

"Anomaly" is one of those words that, in the space industry, can mean anything from "Our payload isn't behaving as well as we're expecting" to "Someone stepped on it" to "A rock hit it"

You can use it to describe literally anything that's off nominal. It's fantastic.

doright• 6 days ago

GOES-17 had the loop heat pipe anomaly(Supposedly from someone stepping on it in the cleanroom...)

Was this reported anywhere in the news? Sounds like one of those "not even once" kind of mistakes.

GTP• 6 days ago

You expect cleanrooms to be extremely controlled environments where skilled technicians and engineers very carefully handle sensitive equipment... Then someone steps on a component :D

krisoft• 6 days ago

Yeah. Stuff happens.

There is the famous case of dropping the NOAA N-Prime weather satellite on the ground. They were trying to turn it from vertical to horizontal and they forgot to bolt it to the adapter. Worse: multiple people signed the paperwork attesting that they verified that it was bolted down correctly. Pictures and details here: https://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0410/04noaanreport/

Or the famous “space aligator” event. There the original plan was to launch a manned space craft and an unmanned module to do a docking test between them. But the shroud protecting the target module didn’t deploy properly. If i remember it right because the man who usually assembled that part had to leave during assembly because his wife was giving birth. Someone put it together but appearantely not correctly. The half opened shroud reminded the astronauts to the jaws of an angry aligator hence the name. Pictures: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/gemini/gemini-ix/gemini-ix-cre...

Or to not only list American failures: this russian satelite launch failed spectacularly because the IMU was installed upside down. https://youtu.be/ycRVAcZC5R4?si=LRTS7sutKSp6HnGs This was designed to be impossible to do, but someone bent and forced the component to stay in place in the wrong orientation. Then someone else whose job was to check it just signed the paperwork without climbing into the location where he could have checked it.

I love these cases. Because it shows to me how even though the trappings of high-tech we are all fundamentally just occasionally lazy, occasionally distracted monkeys banging rocks together.

walrus01• 6 days ago

NOAA-19 was dropped on its side because somebody forgot to attach the bolts to the transport platform it was riding on.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=satellite...

NetMageSCW3• 4 days ago

The independent review team concluded the issue was from FOD in the pipe and recommended a redesign. Do you have a definite citation for someone stepped on it?

Uncle_Brumpus• 7 days ago

Interestingly, I noticed this in aproximately real time. I had been checking up on the visible-light geocolor composite images every hour or so to look at the massive plume of Canadian wildfire smoke that was turning the skies in the northeast dark orange yesterday.

I haven't interacted with the GOES site or cared too much about the image output until the last 2 days, and the it immediately broke. Somewhat humorous to me.

justusthane• 7 days ago

Is this what you're talking about? https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/goes/conus_band.php?sat=G16...

dwroberts• 6 days ago

This is a really cool page, never really thought about how much information you can squeeze out of just IR (recommend selecting the dust RGB and reading the PDF it links to explaining just how dust is tracked etc)

brorfred• 6 days ago

I strongly recommend the Downlink app for this!

https://downlinkapp.com

It downloads false-color images from GOES and Himawari NRT and sets them as desktop images.

dekhn• 7 days ago

I love how "safe mode" for a satellite is basically: "extend solar panels, turn self towards sun, don't do anything unnecessary, wait for further instructions".

pphysch• 7 days ago

They should rebrand it as "Praise the Sun" mode. We are sorry, GOES-19 is temporarily unavailable during a planned solar worship break of indefinite length.

farx• 7 days ago

Initiate Sol Invictus mode

dabluecaboose9• 7 days ago

The cool thing about geostationary orbits is that they're far enough out that they get 24/7 sun (Except around the equinoxes). We could easily fit a solar worship break in the schedule in between imaging and momentum dumps.

bee_rider• 7 days ago

Just don’t point the thing at any maggots.

munificent• 7 days ago

My restorative mode is also "turn self towards sun, don't do anything unnecessary".

erikig• 7 days ago

"Turn your face to the sun and the shadows will fall behind you." Māori Proverb

ls655362• 7 days ago

Very unfortunate timing given the ongoing wildfires and associated smoke spreading across eastern North America in recent days.

ls655362• 7 days ago

Looks like they're making progress toward getting things restarted: "Update #2: The GOES-19 Safehold has been resolved and engineers are working to prepare for restart of the onboard instruments. More information on the recovery timeline will be provided when known." [0]

[0] https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/messages/2026/07/MSG_20260716...

tomnicholas12• 7 days ago

Anyone interested in accessing GOES data at scale will find this interesting - I created a Zarr index over the 7 billion chunks of data in the GOES-16 archive.

https://www.earthmover.io/blog/virtual-zarr

runamuck• 7 days ago

I used to work for NOAA. I think the scientists would flip out over this. Did you share it?

tomnicholas12• 6 days ago

Yes! But if you want to share it with anyone else that would be great, since we're advocating for fairly radical changes within a big bureaucracy here, as I'm sure you will appreciate :)

webdoodle• 7 days ago

Invasion of Cuba incoming?

edot• 7 days ago

No, you can’t see ships with this satellite. Too small. Besides, Russia and China have way better satellites that they’ll happily share intel from with Cuba.

ck22• 7 days ago

status page says

        SAFEHOLD HAS BEEN RESOLVED

> Update #2: The GOES-19 Safehold has been resolved and engineers are working to prepare for restart of the onboard instruments. More information on the recovery timeline will be provided when known.

* https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/operations/goes/status.html

* https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/operations/goes/status.html#datafi...

dlgeek• 7 days ago

From the latest update (https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/operations/goes/status.html#datafi...), it looks like they're already restoring systems.

``` Update #3: DCS and SAR have returned to service as of 1630Z. Engineers will now work to restore ABI and expect imaging to resume by 1900Z. Image navigation may be slightly degraded for the first hour after imaging starts. The GOES-19 instruments will be restored in the following order:

    ABI
    GLM
    SUVI
    CCOR-1/EXIS/MAG/SEISS

The recovery process to return all GOES-19 instruments to normal operations is projected to take approximately 8 hours.

Update #2: The GOES-19 Safehold has been resolved and engineers are working to prepare for restart of the onboard instruments. More information on the recovery timeline will be provided when known. ```

yabones• 7 days ago

Looks like its started to publish new imagery again! I'm sure those fellows are relieved to have it working... I can't imagine the stress of trying to debug something that far away and unreachable!

https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/sector_band.php?sat=G1...

kittikitti• 6 days ago

These environmental satellites affect our day-to-day including the accuracy of weather forecasts. I believe the GOES program must receive more government funding because GOES-19 is a single point of failure and there have been numerous funding concerns. This is a national security issue because lack of resources to mitigate emergency weather events can lead to increased loss of life.

NetMageSCW3• 4 days ago

What about the on-orbit spares?

Goes-19 weather satellite enters Safe Hold mode

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