SeaWiFS is Fully Operational

As of Thursday, Sept. 18, 1997, the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) was transitioned from test to fully operational schedule. L-band transmissions of 1 kilometer data will be enabled during all imaging operations and global 4 kilometer data plus limited onboard 1 kilometer data will be stored onboard and downlinked at noon and midnight at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

The first full test day of complete SeaWiFS operations began at noon (Eastern time) Monday, Sept. 15, and continued through noon Tuesday, Sept. 16. During that time, global Global Area Coverage (GAC) data was recorded onboard and the real-time, High-Resolution Picture Transmission (HRPT) L-band broadcast was active. The SeaWiFS Project has received and successfully processed the first global data set and will be making this plus all additional data sets available on Tuesday, Sept. 23. The data will be available on the SeaWiFS World Wide Web Browser and at NASA's Goddard Distributed Active Archive Center. The start of routine data operations is set for Thursday, Sept. 18 at noon (Eastern time).

The series of 32 orbit raising burns has been completed without a problem and SeaStar is now at its final 705 kilometer altitude. Based on preliminary analyses, the spacecraft is right in the middle of the target orbit. Orbit parameters are: 697 X 712 km altitude, 705 km semi-major axis, 98.217 degrees inclination and a local time of descending node of 12:05 pm + 15 seconds.

The first engineering test of the SeaWiFS instrument took place on Thursday, September 4, 1997 during which time a short (approximately 4 minute) real-time transmission over NASA/Wallops was transmitted.