One of NASA’s best data centers has been taken offline by a flood


  • One of the data centers used by NASA was damaged by a burst pipe
  • Experts are still assessing the extent of the damage
  • Stanford describes the outage as ‘serious’

A number of NASA projects, such as the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) mission, are facing major disruptions after the data center they rely on was recently damaged by water, leading to a major outage.

Stanford’s Joint Science Operations Center (JSOC) confirmed that a burst water pipe seriously damaged the data center’s servers, and that a solution could be far away.

JSOC explained that on November 26, a 4-inch chilled water pipe ruptured, affecting the machines that process and distribute data from the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) and Atmospheric Imaging Array (AIA) instruments, as well as the IRIS spacecraft.

NASA’s data center is offline

JSOC said its team is still assessing the extent of the damage, but has confirmed that the damage is “severe”, adding that data processing for the HMI, AIA and IRIS projects for a will not be available for an extended period of time. .”

Although data processing is expected to be unavailable for an uncertain period of time, JSOC has assured us that data capture systems are still in place and functional, and therefore new data will continue to be collected as usual. Instruments aboard the SDO and IRIS will continue to collect observation data, which will be temporarily stored at the DDS in New Mexico, until repairs are completed.

The SDO before declared that it generates approximately 42 terabytes of solar observation data monthly, highlighting the scale of the challenge posed by water-induced outages.

Although data will remain accessible on the SDO website until November 26, solar scientists and space weather forecasters will have to turn to alternative data sources until the data center is back online.

JSOC stated: “We deeply regret any inconvenience caused and appreciate your patience as our team prioritizes the repair and restoration of affected systems.”

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