NOAA plans to begin lowering the orbit of its Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite on December 1, the agency announced October 19. The end-of-mission sequence is expected to take approximately 12 days before a planned reentry over a remote area of the South Pacific.

Launched in October 2011, Suomi NPP was designed as a five-year pathfinder for a newer generation of polar-orbiting environmental satellites. It continued serving well beyond that initial design period, collecting observations used to monitor storms, fires, vegetation, sea ice and other environmental conditions.

NOAA says aging instruments and spacecraft systems have degraded. Newer NOAA-21 and NOAA-20 satellites now provide the primary and secondary operational observations, with Suomi NPP having served a backup role since 2024.

The planned disposal includes staged maneuvers and monitoring of the spacecraft’s position and condition. Its purpose includes reducing the accumulation of orbital debris. The announcement is a future retirement plan, not confirmation that reentry has occurred or that NOAA’s wider environmental-observation service has stopped.