NOAA stopped delivering data from the Suomi NPP weather satellite on Nov. 2, 2026, ending a mission that began with its launch on Oct. 28, 2011. Delivery ended at 15:40 UTC, or 10:40 a.m. Eastern, and the agency’s notice calls the outage permanent. The spacecraft itself is next in line for retirement.
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Forecast users have been told to switch to NOAA-21 as the primary source and NOAA-20 as the secondary one.
The 15:40 UTC cutoff and the instruments that went dark
NESDIS’s Update 4, issued Nov. 2 at 18:00 UTC, says S-NPP delivery ended at 15:40 UTC and that the High Rate Data direct broadcast was disabled at the same moment. Data from the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS), the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES), both Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) sensors, nadir and limb, and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) stopped. The Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) had already ended operational use on Dec. 23, 2025, so the Nov. 2 cutoff took the last remaining instruments and not a full payload.
The clock moved during the notice series. The original notice issued Aug. 3 gave 13:00 UTC, and Update 1 shifted the date from Nov. 1 to Nov. 2 because Nov. 1 fell on a Sunday. Update 3, dated Oct. 30, set the final time at 15:40 UTC. NASA’s Earthdata alert still carried the earlier 13:00 time and then recorded 15:40 from the Nov. 2 update.
The notice trail is short. NESDIS’s Office of Satellite and Product Operations issued its Notice of Changes on Aug. 3, 2026, at 16:00 UTC, Update 3 followed on Oct. 30 at 14:00 UTC, and Update 4 came on Nov. 2 at 18:00 UTC, a little over two hours after delivery stopped. The titles of the later updates refer to both the 15:40 UTC cessation and decommissioning, though Update 4 itself covers only the data cutoff and adds no new deorbit detail. NASA’s reminder carried a caveat that the date could change before the cutoff, and it did, by two hours and forty minutes.
NOAA-21 and NOAA-20 take over
NESDIS tells all users to transition to NOAA-21 primary and NOAA-20 secondary science products through its Product Distribution and Access system, and says the two satellites provide complementary science data from similar instruments. NASA’s Earthdata transition page names the same pair and says new data reach users through Earthdata Search and NOAA’s access system. The page lists five Suomi NPP instruments, each with its own transition resources, and says NOAA-20 and NOAA-21 belong to the Joint Polar Satellite System fleet designed to continue the Suomi NPP legacy. NASA keeps the historical Suomi NPP archive available through its data centers, among them ASDC, GES DISC, LAADS DAAC, LP DAAC, NSIDC, OB.DAAC, ORNL DAAC and PO.DAAC.
A NESDIS briefing deck prepared for a 2026 interagency meeting describes the polar fleet as fully meeting availability and latency requirements. It lists JPSS-4 with a target launch in November 2027 and JPSS-3 forecast for 2032, leaving NOAA-20 and NOAA-21 as the operating pair until a new satellite flies.
Archive users saw one more disruption. The Earthdata alert says ingest at PO.DAAC, ASF DAAC and GES DISC was interrupted from Oct. 28 to 30, 2026, during a migration to NASA’s Consolidated Ingest and Archive system. The same page labels the cutoff day as 2026/206, though Nov. 2 is day 306 of the year, so that label looks like a typo. NESDIS’s own notices carry the 15:40 UTC time without that confusion, and they route questions to NOAA’s User Services team.
December lowering and a South Pacific reentry
Update 3 lays out the endgame: starting Dec. 1, 2026, S-NPP is to be lowered incrementally until about Dec. 12, then reenter over the South Pacific Ocean. NOAA said it will post daily status updates after Dec. 1.
The NESDIS deck shows how long the retirement was in preparation. Decommissioning procedures were due for validation in the first quarter of 2026, an initial six-burn deorbit test had succeeded, and a two-week campaign simulation was planned. The slides carry inconsistent dates, so the exact sequence of those tests is unclear. The deck says NESDIS leadership directed decommissioning and disposal planning to continue while a decision on the end-of-life milestone was pending, and that no stakeholder review was scheduled. It targeted decommissioning by the end of fiscal 2026, with deorbit no earlier than 2026, and noted that the Office of Satellite and Product Operations was waiting for confirmation from the NESDIS assistant administrator before issuing notifications. The satellite had then logged more than 13 years on orbit. What the notices settle is the endpoint: no S-NPP science data after 15:40 UTC on Nov. 2, with questions routed to NOAA’s User Services team.
The notices come from the Office of Satellite and Product Operations and carry no named spokesperson, so the central claim rests on the agency’s own series of updates rather than a quoted official.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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