What is a solar intrusion? How does it affect GOES?
Solar intrusions are only a concern for GOES during the eclipse seasons. During a 48-day eclipse season as the sun moves from North-to-South (Autumnal Equinox) and South-to-North (Vernal Equinox), it will move closer to the Earth sensor chord, eventually entering the chord’s field-of-view. In order to prevent the Earth sensor from scanning the sun, the chord containing the intrusion will be inhibited from scanning. Since solar intrusions only occur during eclipse season, there will be an image outage whenever GOES is performing single-chord operations due to a solar intrusion.
