The project is sponsored and managed by NASA, while the spacecraft was designed and assembled by the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University.

This can have profound effects on Earth's upper atmospheric regions, particularly during the peak of the Sun's 11-year solar cycle when the greatest amounts of its energy are being released.

[3] [citation needed] TIMED experienced minor problems with attitude control when, after launch, the magnetorquers failed to slow the spacecraft's spin as intended.

An engineer installing the magnetorquers had mistakenly recorded the reverse of their actual polarities, which generated a sign error in the flight software.

[8] SABER had a flaw in its optical filter that caused it to overestimate water vapor levels; this error was discovered and the data were corrected.

[9] Based on the corrected data, SABER found that between 2002 and 2018, water vapor levels in the lower stratosphere were increasing at an average rate of 0.25 ppmv (around 5%) per decade, and in the upper stratosphere and mesosphere, water vapor levels were increasing at an average rate of 0.1-0.2 ppmv (around 2-3%) per decade.