seawifs is back after a successful orbit raising campaign

[genecarlfeldman]

good morning,
it's a pleasure to let everyone know that after much planning, some great teamwork on the part of all the folks involved and thirteen burns, seawifs is now happily orbiting the earth from it's new altitude of 781.5 kilometers. this orbit raising along with a very slight change in the inclination has not only stopped the rapidly accelerating drift of the spacecraft into the afternoon (it is now crossing the equator at approximately 2:20 pm local time) but has reversed that drift and the spacecraft will now gradually return to an orbit with a crossing time closer to 12:20 pm. the seawifs instrument resumed routine operations last night and we received our first downlink and the data look fine. we will be looking closely at the data to see what, if any change there might be due to the change in orbit but we don't anticipate anything major.
seawifs will be celebrating the 13th anniversary of it's launch on august 1, 1997 this year so rather than a cake with thirteen candles, perhaps it is appropriate that it required 13 burns to put it back into an orbit that will allow it to continue collecting this unprecedented record of our changing earth.
best regards,
gene