
The SeaWinds scatterometer on QuikSCAT began producing science quality data on July 19, 1999. Since aunch, the SeaWinds instrument provided consistent, high quality data covering more than 90% of the ice-free oceans every day for more than 10 years.
On November 23, 2009 (orbital rev number 54315), 7:07 UTC, the QuikSCAT antenna stalled to 0 RPM, and has remained stalled in a fixed-azimuth position since that time, with some exceptional brief periods in 2013 where the antenna began to spin. During this "non-spinning" mode, Level 2A (L2A) science data was not retrievable; hence the Level 2B (L2B) wind vectors were likewise also not retrievable.