Contact:  Randee Exler             FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
                                   10/28/98

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's GOES-8 weather satellite is once again monitoring the movements of Hurricane Mitch, following a successful recovery from an earth-pointing malfunction, the Commerce Department agency announced. The weather satellite spent approximately 19 hours in a "safe hold" before returning to operations at 9:45 p.m. EST Oct. 27.

Preliminary analysis by NOAA, NASA and Space Systems/Loral engineers point to potential problems in the area of the spacecraft sensor that controls the satellite's earth-pointing capability. Spacecraft operators at NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service's Satellite Operations Control Center in Suitland, Md., switched to the satellite's backup or "redundant" earth sensor, which is currently controlling the satellite in its normal on-orbit mode. A possible cause of the problem may have been an electrostatic discharge, but analysis is still underway.

"GOES-8 operations are returning to normal and our engineers continue to closely monitor the spacecraft's performance," said Gerald Dittberner, NOAA's GOES program manager. "GOES-8 is expected to return to full service when pointing accuracy returns to normal. We expect this to occur on Thursday, Oct. 29."

Until the navigation stabilizes, individual images will be useful, but sequences of images will be misaligned.

While GOES-8 was off-line, there was no interruption of services to meteorologists at NOAA's Tropical Prediction Center/National Hurricane Center in Miami, Fla., who are providing warnings about Hurricane Mitch. NOAA satellite controllers programmed a companion satellite, GOES-10, to cover for the GOES-8 outage.

NOAA's GOES satellites continue to provide an excellent set of real-time weather data for weather forecasters and researchers. It is the same imagery seen daily on TV weather forecasts. NOAA's National Weather Service combines the satellite data with data from Doppler radars and automated surface observing systems to improve weather forecasts and numerical models. Better warnings of thunderstorms, winter storms, flash floods, hurricanes, and other severe weather help to save lives, preserve property and benefit commercial interests.

NOAA's NESDIS funds and operates the GOES series of satellites. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center manages the design, development, and launch of the GOES spacecraft for NOAA. The GOES satellites are built under contract through NASA by Space Systems/Loral of Palo Alto, Calif.