The ten-year-old QuikSCAT (Quick Scatterometer) NASA mission is considered by many at the American space agency and elsewhere as one of the most valuable national resources in orbit today. The satellite, whose goal was to provide up-to-date data on the direction and speed of winds over the planet's oceans, was originally designed to last for no more than five years. It was launched on June 19, 1999 from the Vandenberg Air Force Base, aboard a Titan 23G delivery system, and entered the active scientific-operation stage shortly after. However, in recent months, age-related damages have prevented it from continuing its mission, experts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) announce.

“In recent months, the QuikSCAT project team has been monitoring a pattern of increasing friction in the bearings that allow the antenna to spin, leading to increased resistance and strain on the motor that turns QuikSCAT's rotating antenna. This degradation was fully expected, as the spin mechanism was designed to last about 5 years,” a press release on the JPL official news blog shows. The antenna stopped spinning altogether on Monday, November 23, after showing increased signs of trouble over the weekend. Unfortunately, the glitch was not minor, and the mechanisms could no longer spin the SCAT.

The spinning antenna is absolutely crucial to the satellite's ability to record wind-flow patterns, speeds and directions, so, without it, the mission's main goal cannot be continued. Engineers say that, even if they find themselves unable to make the scatterometer start again, there isn't much more that they could possibly ask from the satellite, following its impeccable mission. Still, planning for the worst, mission managers are currently trying to come up with brand-new tasks that the spacecraft could perform, which do not require its antenna.

“For example, degraded scatterometer measurements from QuikScat can still be useful for cross-calibrating the mission's climate data record with measurements from other scatterometers, including the operational EUMETSAT ASCAT instrument, India's recently launched Oceansat-2 and a planned Chinese scatterometer. Specific operational forecasting applications such as polar ice measurements and limited hurricane observations may also be supportable,” JPL experts say.