It has found out that the US space-weather satellite had failed to work, not just once but already for the fifth time, since it started operating this year. The weather satellite supposed to forewarn Earth to an approaching solar storms. It was speculated that the onboard computer may have had experienced hiccups caused by unexpected galactic cosmic rays.

Recently, On 11 October, the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) went out of action to check the causes. It was observed that it circumstantially entered a 'safe hold' in every case. This implied that a scientific data stopped to flow. Thus, engineers had make haste for the spacecraft to be recovered, according to Scientific American.

Then engineers found out that in total DSCOVR's space-weather instruments got offline for more than 42 hours from 28 October 2015 since the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) brought it there. NOAA had originally taken this spacecraft over from NASA, the one which built and launched it.

As the experts examined the problem, they had determined that every outage lasted for only few hours. It amounted to 0.48% of its total downtime amounts in space. Thus, it did not go beyond the 96% requirement of NOAA which implemented the standard operating time of a space-weather instrument, Nature said.

Robert Rutledge, head of the forecast office at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center located at Boulder, Colorado said that the outage on 11 October did not essentially caused an impact on its predictions of a minor geomagnetic storm that came a few days later.

A solar physicist at the Boulder center, Douglas Biesecker, confirmed through saying a big yes when he was asked if DSCOVR is problematic. The answer led to a notion of concern that if the outages mean that the space-weather satellite could be offline when a chief solar storm explodes, it leaves the earth totally blind to the upcoming wrath.

There are other heliophysics spacecraft that could detect solar eruptions, however DSCOVR had unique features which could deliver unique data from its location which has a gravitational stable point of L1. This could reached at about 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth to the direction of the Sun.

Its feature consisted instruments that measure the speed, magnetic field and other properties of the charged particles streaming off the Sun. The information collected translated into better forecasts on the things that would happen whenever the solar system hits the surface of the Earth.

Disruptions to satellite electronics and fluctuations in electrical power grids are instances that could happen surmounted with the hit of the solar storm.

In Washington DC, Steven Clarke, head of NASA's heliophysics division, iterated that from the very start the instrument was never designed to be a space-weather satellite.

NOAA's main tool, DSCOVR came to life as Triana. Built in late 1990s, it then served as NASA Earth-observing spacecraft to regularly heed at the planet. Triana has been a pet project of Al Gore. Later on the US vice-president shelved it in 2001. Then in 2008, it was repurposed for space-weather needs of NOAA.

The satellite was then launched on February 11, 2015, however four months later it experienced an outage for the first time. The onboard computer rebooted spontaneously triggered the cause of the outage. On average, every 74 days the safe holds occur. Yet two outages came just eight days apart. In the findings it were not related to solar storms.

Based on the observations conducted, the NASA internal review board convened that studying the problem could not certainly point the cause. However the board concluded that it seemingly the galactic cosmic rays strike the spacecraft in a random. Thus, it caused high-energy ionization which affectedly reboots the computer.

It was in 2000 that NASA created the computer. A processor card that resembled to those flying aboard with many other missions was contained in the computer. Moreover, the card inside the computer could withstand the hardest blow of radiation hazards to the deep space.

NOAA had a back-up data stream which comes from the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft. ACE was also revolving the L1 point. It served as the primary source of solar-wind data. However, in July NOAA forecasters shifted to DSCOVR. Though ACE existed for 19 years, it could not withstand when an extreme solar storms strike. Thus, it can cause problems when information is needed the most.

Recently, a huge budget cost US$1.5 million has been requested from the Congress has been requested for NOAA to effectively handle DSCOVR data. According to NOAA the budget is allocated to respond to the outages and other concerns pertaining to DSCOVR. In 2022, the satellite is supposed to end as soon as the follow-up mission is slated for launch.

Looking back, NOAA has patched together its space-weather observations as far as they could. However, the US government was quite not satisfied and started to require a more coherent approach.

On 13 October, an executive order that required NOAA to ensure the continuous improvement of operational space weather services was inked by President Barack Obama.

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