Great news for the SORCE mission! After a Key Decision Point (KDP) Meeting regarding SORCE’s Phase F, NASA Headquarters has decided to extend SORCE operations into January 2020.

SORCE has had battery issues for years and had some communication outages in April 2019. This later anomaly triggered NASA HQ to accelerate the SORCE decommissioning planning and to hold the SORCE KDP-F meeting on July 11, 2019. The objective for this meeting was to evaluate the SORCE decommissioning plan, schedule, and budget for mission close-out and decide between a mid July 2019 passivation (turn-off) or the original January 2020 passivation date.
The final decision to stay with January 2020 passivation was based on SORCE’s compelling science, than the potential battery and other spacecraft risks, which might force an early passivation. The current plan for SORCE is to continue operations until January 15, 2020, and SORCE Phase F will start the day after passivation and go through September 2020 to produce and archive the final data products.

SORCE mission operations team – working their magic.