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In Scott Manley's recent video Views Of Earth and the Seasons From A Million Miles Away - DSCOVR & EPIC after about 04:20 he says:

…it’s one of my favorite missions because it has this very simple idea of just showing the Earth continuously. So you could browse to a web page and always see what it was, until June (2019) when it stopped working; we haven’t had any updates since then.

Question: What stopped working, the EPIC camera or the whole DSCOVR payload or the whole satellite, bus and all? There are a lot of instruments on DSCOVR, including some that provide early warning of major solar events that could disrupt Earth satellites and power distribution.

uhoh
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1 Answers1

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On June 27th, 2019 NASA states that DSCOVR is in a "safe-hold".

All DSCOVR space weather instrument data and other instrument data have been suspended as the spacecraft has entered into safe-hold. Anomaly investigations and associated recovery activities are underway.

Source: NASA

A few days later they said it had to do with the satellite's position.

“NOAA is addressing a performance issue with the DSCOVR satellite,” John Leslie, a spokesperson for NOAA, told Popular Science in a statement. “Engineers have placed the satellite into a ‘safehold’ position, while they first diagnose and then work to fix a technical issue in the system that maintains the satellite’s position.”

Source: MSN

According to Simon Carn, the September DSCOVR Science Team meeting reports...

they hope to restore EPIC by January 2020. Need to implement star-tracking software to replace faulty gyro, so the S/C can orient itself & point accurately at Earth.

Schwern
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