This picture could use some resyncing in the middle.
Anyway, how do you know the scan motor current has gone up? Is there a digital signal besides the image?
The satellite is sending the sync pulse for the second channel twice in that middle bit, so the software fails to sync.
The scan motor current for this satellite is on this page under Telemetry/Scan Motor Current
There is a small digital signal (DSB) near this downlink that has some other sensors and telemetry.
There is also another digital signal (HRPT) at a much higher frequency (1.7GHz) that has all the sensors and also the raw data for this image. It requires a dish and tracking, but this satellite has a broken transmitter for that higher frequency, so it's much weaker. The artefacts look completely different in the raw digital image. An image from this sat on HRPT:
Wow that's nuts. Not but 3 hours ago I captured a pass on 15 that didn't seem to be showing it (nevermind the poor quality)
This post is 4 months old, the AVHRR has mostly recovered since
I honestly thought the "M" meant months. Lol
