Retirement/Divestiture of Geostationary and Polar Orbiting Satellite Products

The successful launches of GOES-R (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite R-series) and impending JPSS (Joint Polar Satellite System) launch joining the existing NOAA/NASA Suomi-NPP satellite has led to massive amounts of innovative new science products becoming available to agencies and organizations in the US and around the world. To ensure success, NESDIS STAR defines an enterprise product life cycle (EPL) approach relative to the development of science products. The NESDIS Office of Satellite Product and Operations (OSPO) define the retirement and divesture of environmental satellite products as detailed in NPD 7101.1A policy. This policy specifies Satellite Products and Services Review Board (SPSRB) be responsible for the oversight and guidance necessary to manage the product life cycle processes and include the product divestiture or retirement phase in its oversight.

At some point during a science products’ life cycle, the product becomes uneconomical to maintain, obsolete or unrepairable. The amount of effort to maintain algorithms and products becomes unsustainable. This poster depicts the various stages of the SPSRB retirement/divestiture process as well as the initiating events that may lead to a recommendation for product retirement. These events include system-driven, user driven and fiscally driven events or new user requirements. In response to User-Driven or Fiscally-Driven initiating events, OSPO conducts a product audit to determine if the product still meets the original user requirements and performance specifications. This too, will be explored as an example product will be traced from its concept stage to retirement to validate the process, identify average periods of time between retirement phases and what types of users and how they are notified.