Operations have resumed at the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) following the flood at its data center in late 2024.
In a January 7 update from the Joint Science Operations Center (JSOC) at Stanford, staff said that the observatory has "begun processing most near-real-time (nrt) SDO data products."
As first reported by space.com, the SDO's database server is "functioning adequately for the purpose of the pipeline" and warm backup database servers have also been enabled.
The SDO notes that it is expecting a few-week delay before bringing the database archive up to full functionality as it is waiting for replacement hardware which was ordered before Christmas and is expected to arrive soon.
The flood occurred on November 26 when a four-inch chilled water pipe broke and caused major flooding in the building. According to a December 9 update, around 20 percent of the database servers and data servers were damaged. According to the SDO, "several large data partitions that are on disk do not function."
The update added that several UPS power supplies were damaged, along with the web servers and the WSO data reduction computer.
The machines impacted processed and distributed data from the SDO's Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) and Atmospheric Imaging Array (AIA) instruments from the IRIS spacecraft.
The IRIS (Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph) probe launched in June 2013, with HMI used to track oscillations and the magnetic field at the solar surface.
AIA is a four-telescope array, operating primarily in the extreme ultraviolet to track the Sun's corona - it is used to study solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), among other solar phenomena.
The SDO has been researching solar activity and its effect on Earth since 2010. IRIS has remained operational throughout the downtime, meaning that scientific data has not been lost and is currently being processed retroactively from the date of the flood.
The SDO JSOC data center is located in California. SDO telemetry was previously impacted in October by a cable cut in New Mexico.