Clearly the solution to the challenges of 2020 is to be in space, far above earthly problems. We’re celebrating one year since our launch on October 10, and – once past the electrical grid shutdowns that made launch challenging -- ICON has had a pretty rewarding year. Mission operations have gone smoothly, overcoming all challenges that have come up, and implementing a lot of calibration activities to enhance the science mission. Our instruments have gotten great data which are now available to the public. A number of ICON-related articles have gone to press or are heading there shortly, see our publications. We’re looking forward to Fall AGU to share our science results with a broad audience.

It’s about a year until ICON launches, and all teams—science, instruments, mission operations and modeling teams—are moving forward with laser focus. There is little time to rest when so much goes into making a NASA satellite ready for launch in June 2017.  Systems need to be tested to ensure they can download and process the data that ICON will be generating nearly continuously, orbit after orbit, in Earth’s upper atmosphere. Current data processing testing is making use of the data that the flight instruments are already producing as they undergo ground testing—it's a great way to see how everything's flowing through the data pipeline.  In fact, the mission and instrument operations teams worked together recently to perform a “day in the life” test with the instruments, where they ran them through a 24 hour long sequence of commands, to simulate what they will do over a full day's worth of orbits.