So long, NOAA-19
Today at 16:55 UTC, NOAA decommissioned NOAA-19, the most recently launched of the remaining legacy NOAA POES spacecraft. NOAA-19 launched on February 6th, 2009 and become operational on June 2nd, 2009. For the last 16 years, NOAA-19 has provided routine weather observations of the entire globe from low-earth orbit.
The AVHRR visible/IR imager and AMSU-A/MHS set of microwave sounders were both functioning well on NOAA-19 in its final days. However, due to a spacecraft battery failure on August 9th, the decision was made to accelerate the decommissioning timeline by about 6 days. The HRPT direct broadcast system on the spacecraft started to falter on August 11th, so the final daytime overpass of Wisconsin by NOAA-19 (with valid science data) was received by SSEC’s Madison antenna at 15:56 UTC on August 10th. Below is a selection of the AVHRR Level 1 imagery from that pass, along with AVHRR Level 2 Sea Surface Temperature retrievals from CSPP ACSPO, and AMSU-A/MHS Level 2 Total Precipitable Water and Rain Rate products from CSPP MiRS.
 |  | [Inactive] |
| AVHRR Band 1: “Red Visible” [0.63 µm] | AVHRR Band 2: “Vegetation Near-IR” [0.86 µm] | AVHRR Band 3A: “Snow/Ice Near-IR” [1.61 µm] |
 |  |  |
| AVHRR Band 3B: “Shortwave IR Window” [3.74 µm] | AVHRR Band 4: “Legacy IR Window” [10.8 µm] | AVHRR Band 5: “Dirty IR Window” [12.0 µm] |
 |  |  |
| ACSPO AVHRR Sea Surface Temperature | MiRS AMSU-A/MHS Total Precipitable Water | MiRS AMSU-A/MHS Rain Rate |
Today’s activity follows NOAA-18’s decommissioning on June 6th. NOAA-15, the last operating spacecraft in the POES series, is slated to be turned off during the week of August 18th.