On Tuesday, November 26, 2024 a 4-inch chilled-water pipe in the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) Joint Science Operations Center (JSOC) server room broke. This caused major flooding in the building and extensive water damage in the lab that houses the machines that process and distribute data from the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) and Atmospheric Imaging Array (AIA) instruments and from the IRIS spacecraft. The Stanford JSOC team is working to assess the extent of the damage, but it is severe. Science data processing for HMI, AIA, and IRIS will be down for an extended length of time, as will access to the archived data at JSOC.
The data capture systems for all three instruments remain functional, so ultimately incoming data are not expected to be lost. Instrument health and safety monitoring is being handled at the Instrument Operations Center at the Lockheed Martin Solar & Astrophysics Lab (LMSAL). The instruments continue to function normally.
The team will provide updates as more information becomes available. We deeply regret any inconvenience and appreciate your patience as our team prioritizes the repair and recovery of the affected systems.