Topic: GOES-16/17/18/19 Fall 2026 Solar RFI predicted times are now available

Date/Time Issued: October 2, 2026 1230 UTC 

Product(s) or Data Impacted: GOES-16/17/18/19 Imager and Sounder Data plus Ancillary Services (SAR, HRIT, DCS, GRB, RDL, T&C etc.)

Date/Time of Initial Impact: October 1, 2026 1748 UTC

Date/Time of Expected End: October 12, 2026 1651 UTC

Length of Outage: See table in details. 

Details/Specifics of Change: 

The potential for solar radio frequency interference (RFI) with a satellite downlink circuit will occur whenever the Sun passes into the beam of the ground station receiving antenna. 

We received the following information from our Mission Operations Division concerning the potential for outages of the GOES data stream including SAR (Search and Rescue), High Rate Information Transmission (HRIT), Telemetry and Command (T&C), Data Collection Services (DCS), Raw Data Link (RDL),  GOES Rebroadcast (GRB), etc.

The Wallops and Fairbanks Command and Data Acquisition Stations (CDAs) and Environmental Satellite Processing Center (ESPC) receiving antennas may experience periods of Solar RFI as predicted below. Solar RFI can cause loss of telemetry lock and command capability.

Solar RFI predicted times for the Fall 2026:

Contact for Further Information: ESPC Operations at ESPCOperations@noaa.gov at 301-817-3880

Web Site(s) for applicable information:

See http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Operations/GOES/schedules.html for full GOES scanning schedules and scan sectors.

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