[GLIMS] GLIMS Update on ASTER

[Jeffrey Kargel]

Update from the 52nd ASTER Science Team meeting, in Tokyo. Thirty-three years of ASTER meetings! My first ASTER meeting was 29 years ago!

ASTER decommissioning ("passivation" = murder in some languages)
is slated for September 2026. It could occur earlier.

>From October 2022 until July 2023, ASTER data were acquired but not processed due to a software debacle. Recovery required somebody to get up to speed in 25-year-old software coding. Starting in mid July, processing
resumed with X months required to clear the backlog. X might be 3 months to 9 months, but there is still a big backlog. Processing is occurring in reverse chronological order of acquisition date (more recent ones first).

Now a new threat is failure of 4 of ASTER's 24 shunts, whatever they are. One shunt failed early in the mission, and 3 more failed in the last 1.5 years.
The system requires 19 shunts to operate nominally, so we have one shunt to spare, whatever that means exactly. But the failure rate increased, so that has Mission Ops concerned. There are some options for reduced operations if another two shunts fail. There are multiple missions coming up that will be good follow-ons to ASTER.

There have been some uncertain issues affecting acquisitions over the Himalaya. I will learn more about that later in the meeting.

I will offer further updates if something rises to a level that would concern some of us in GLIMS.

Cheers,
Jeff Kargel
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