CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Laser technology that might provide future spy satellites with a better way to transmit information to Earth will be tested on a $130 million spacecraft launched into orbit Friday from Florida's Space Coast.
Liftoff of the Boeing Delta 2 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's launch pad 17B was at 1:45 p.m. EDT (17:45 GMT) and spacecraft separation from the upper stage booster took place as scheduled about 30 minutes after blast off.
Riding atop the 13-story booster was the Geosynchronous Lightweight Technology Experiment (GeoLITE), a small TRW-built satellite commissioned by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).
From its perch in geosynchronous orbit over the Indian Ocean, GeoLITE will not only test a new laser communications system but also serve as an operational telecommunications satellite for the NRO, agency spokesman Art Haubold said before the launch Friday.
The purpose of the laser system is "obviously to increase the capacity of the information you're capable of sending to the ground," Haubold said.
Details of how the system will work, including the location of ground stations and the exact position of GeoLITE, remains classified, Haubold said.
Announced July 10, 1998 with a $77.8 million contract for TRW to build GeoLITE, the 4,000-pound (1,814-kilogram) satellite nearly doubled in cost to $130 million, not including launch costs, which were not released by the NRO. The satellite is based on previous TRW spacecraft designs, including NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer Earth Probe and China's ROCSAT-1 satellite.The mission was the first to join an NRO satellite with a Boeing Delta 2 rocket.
"As we continue to provide the government with assured access to space with our reliable Delta 2, we are confident that we will also continue to build long-term relationships with organizations like the NRO that will carry into our Delta 4 launch vehicles," said Gale Schluter, vice president of Boeing Expendable Launch Systems.
After a one-day delay to replace some suspect hoses on the first stage main engine, launch was held an extra 38 minutes because of a last-minutue problem with telemetry coming from the spacecraft, and then because of a boat that had to be cleared from the launch danger area out on the Atlantic Ocean.
Boeing's next launch of a Delta 2 rocket is scheduled for June 30 from Cape Canaveral and is to launch NASA's MAP spacecraft at 3:46:46 p.m. EDT (19:46:46 GMT).
Meanwhile the next launch from planet Earth is targeted for 6:32 p.m. EDT (22:32 GMT) Sunday when a Russian Soyuz is to send a Progress cargo freighter on its way to dock with the International Space Station. That launch is to take place from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
advertisement
