Launched in 1999, QuikSCAT was designed to be a “quick recovery” EOS satellite mission to fill the gap of global ocean surface wind vector observations which resulted from the unexpected failure of NSCAT in June of 1997.

The SeaWinds scatterometer on QuikSCAT began producing science quality data on July 19, 1999. Since launch, the SeaWinds instrument provided consistent, high quality data covering more than 90% of the ice-free oceans every day for more than 10 years.

On November 23, 2009 (orbital rev number 54315), 7:07 UTC, the QuikSCAT antenna stalled to 0 RPM, and has remained stalled in a fixed-azimuth position since that time, with some exceptional brief periods in 2013 where the antenna began to spin. During this "non-spinning" mode, Level 2A (L2A) science data was not retrievable; hence the Level 2B (L2B) wind vectors were likewise also not retrievable.