Wind sensor failure ends long-lived satellite mission

A spinning antenna on NASA's QuikSCAT satellite has failed after more than a decade of operations, leaving weather forecasters without a critical tool to measure winds inside distant hurricanes and adding fuel to a political firestorm on a potential replacement. QuikSCAT has been used as an operational resource by meteorologists around the world. It has proven particularly invaluable in gauging the location, size and strength of hurricanes in the open ocean, far from land-based radars and outside the range of reconnaissance aircraft. More

(Source: Space Flight Now - Nov 25)