Article Posted on : - Jun 15, 2010

This first image of the sun from the GOES-15 SXI instrument from June 2, 2010 was a cause for celebration. PHOTO: NASA/NOAA/ Lockheed Martin.

PALO ALTO (BNS): The Solar X-ray Imager (SXI) instrument aboard the NOAA GOES-15 spacecraft has captured the first light image of the Sun.

GOES-15 was launched on March 4, 2010 from Cape Canaveral and the first visible image of the Earth was captured by the spacecraft on April 6th. Later, the spacecraft captured its first full-disk infrared image of Earth on April 26, 2010.

"Since the early checkout of GOES-15 and the anomalous turn-on of the Solar X-Ray Imager, the team has been aggressively pursuing all avenues to recover the instrument," Andre' Dress, GOES N-P Deputy Project Manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a Lockheed Martin news release.

On June 3, the GOES 15 Solar X-Ray Imager finally came on-line. Scientists and engineers had subjected SXI to a series of long duration turn-on tests. They have tested SXI for 16 hours before it started functioning properly.

Since its recovery, several test solar images have taken successfully. The new round of testing will assess SXI's total functionality (processing of image data).

This data provided by SXI is used by the US Department of Defense, NOAA, NASA, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in protecting the space assets, land-based assets and directing flight paths for the FAA.

GOES-15 will join three other NOAA operational GOES spacecraft that will help the agency's forecasters track life-threatening weather and solar activity that can impact the satellite-based electronics and communications industry.

NASA will complete the post-launch test of the spacecraft and its instruments by late August 2010.

The GOES series of US satellites are developed by a joint NASA-NOAA-Industry partnership, launched by NASA (with industry partners), and operated by NOAA.