Space.com: A major US weather satellite is temporarily out of commission after several days of returning images with excessive amounts of noise. Part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite system, GOES-13 was launched in 2006 to track weather systems across the eastern US. NOAA maintains backup satellites, however, for just such eventualities. GOES-14, which has been in “storage orbit” since 2009, has already been deployed and will continue to monitor the East Coast until GOES-13 is fixed.