Sentinel-1B satellite offline for 'several months', possibly forever

Quantum Commodity Intelligence - The European Space Agency's Sentinel-1B satellite will remain offline for 'several months' and possibly forever, the agency said Friday.

The satellite, launched in April 2016 and orbiting the earth's poles, transmits radar signals of the earth's surface, enabling scientists, analysts and traders to monitor things like forest cover, flood events and oil storage volumes in near real-time.

It stopped transmitting data on December 23 because of a power failure, ESA said, and efforts to revive it have so far failed.

Satellites are normally built to last much longer than a few years due to their huge costs.

"Whereas good progress has been made on the investigation of 18 identified possible failure scenarios linked to the affected power unit, at this stage the root cause of the anomaly has not been clearly identified," said ESA.

"Sentinel-1 users should assume a long-term unavailability of data provision (several months). It is however too early to consider a permanent unavailability of Sentinel-1B."

Two new satellites, Sentinel-1C and -1D, are in development. Sentinel-1C is currently scheduled to launch sometime in 2023.

ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher and other officials have suggested that the launch could be moved up if Sentinel-1B cannot be restored.