On March 20, CNES announces the resumption of in-flight acceptance operations.
On March 9, CNES and JPL engineers restarted the main scientific instrument of the French-American SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) satellite. This allowed the teams to resume in-flight acceptance activities for the Ka-band radar interferometer (KaRIn).
The resumption of in-flight acceptance operations follows an unexpected shutdown of the main High Power Amplifier (HPA), a subsystem of the Ka-band radar interferometer (KaRIn), at the end of January. Teams have since been working to analyze the situation and develop a plan to restore operations. In order to expedite the process and minimize overall risk, the French-American project decided to use the redundant HPA unit to resume operations.
The mission continues to monitor KaRIn and overall operations as commissioning, calibration and validation activities progress. This monitoring will allow the teams to ensure system and instrument performance in preparation for the start of science operations scheduled for July 2023.
In particular, satellite flight acceptance activities are expected to be completed by the end of March 2023 as planned, with the various platform subsystems such as the Nadir payload instruments having demonstrated excellent performance in line with project specifications and expectations.
Article originally published on CNES website.