Website Maintenence - 12/29/16

We are conducting planned maintenance on the SDO website. There may be outages or interrupted service. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience.

Planned Activities for January 2017

Another New Year is upon us and it is time to plan the next set of SDO calibration maneuvers. This includes the leap second that needs to be applied just before January starts. Why do we care about leap seconds? SDO moves about 3 km each second (about 1.9 miles every second). So does every other object in orbit near SDO. We all have to use the same time to make sure our collision avoidance programs are accurate. So we all add a leap second to the end of 2016, delaying 2017 by one second. 

Our schedule of maneuvers is:

12/31/16:  Apply Leap Second at 235959 UTC

01/04/17:  Momentum management (Delta-H) Maneuver #28, 1950 UTC (2:50 PM ET)

01/11/17:  EVE FOV (1315 UTC) and HMI/AIA Flatfield (1630 UTC) Maneuvers

01/18/17:  EVE Cruciform, 1700 UTC (12:00 noon ET)

01/25/17:  HMI Roll Maneuver, starts 1500 UTC (10:00 am ET)

02/01/17:  AIA GT/PZT Calibration, 1500 UTC (10:00 am ET)