Jun 15 2007
From The Space Library
A Dnepr rocket launched a German satellite called TerraSAR-X from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 2:14 (UT). The 3,000-pound (1,361-kilogram) TerraSAR-X was a night-vision radar system designed to create the most precise maps and imagery that a civilian space-radar system had produced to date. The craft’s mission was to map Earth and its oceans at a rate of 1 million square kilometers per day (almost 400,000 square miles per day), to capture scientific data such as sea-ice coverage, vegetation and crop estimates, and to acquire military reconnaissance information at a 1.0-meter (3.3-foot) resolution.
Spacewarn Bulletin, no. 644, 1 July 2007, http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/spacewarn/spx644.html (accessed 13 April 2010); Stephen Clark, “German Radar Imaging Satellite Launched into Space,” Spaceflight Now, 16 June 2007.
The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) launched two ocean-surveillance spacecraft from Cape Canaveral aboard an Atlas-5 Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV), marking the rocket’s first NRO secret mission. The NRO had designed the two craft to track ships that might be concealing al-Qaeda operatives and to monitor Iranian and Chinese sea-based military operations. However, the rocket had stopped firing prematurely, causing the craft to launch into the wrong orbit. Although the satellites separated safely from the malfunctioning booster, they did not have enough rocket propellant to reach the correct orbit. Lockheed Martin had built the Atlas-5 using a Lockheed Martin Centaur upper stage, with a Pratt & Whitney RL10 rocket engine powered with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. United Launch Alliance, which operated the Atlas program, managed the launch in conjunction with NRO and the U.S. Air Force’s 45th Space Wing.
Craig Covault, “NRO Spacecraft in Wrong Orbit,” Aviation Week, 16 June 2007, http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=space&id=news/mission06157.xml (accessed 20 June 2010).
Russian cosmonauts Fyodor N. Yurchikhi and Oleg V. Kotov restored two of the three data channels on each of the two computers that had failed on 12 June during the deployment of the solar arrays on the ISS’s new power module. Russian engineers had determined that backuppower supplies for the computers had also failed. While Yurchikhin and Kotov worked on restoring the computers, U.S. astronauts James F. Reilly II and John D. Olivas conducted the third scheduled EVA of the Atlantis Mission [[STS-117. During a spacewalk lasting 7 hours and 58 minutes, Reilly installed a hydrogen vent on the ISS’s Destiny laboratory, and Olivas repaired a 4-by-6-inch (10.2-by-15.2-centimeter) piece of thermal blanket on Atlantis’s left orbital maneuvering- system pod. The thermal blanket had loosened during launch. Together, Olivas and Reilly also finished retracting the old solar panels.
NASA, “STS-117 (21st Space Station Flight)”; Thomas H. Maugh II, “Cosmonauts Reboot Space Station Computers,” Los Angeles Times, 16 June 2007; Mark Carreau, “Astronauts Complete To-Do List on Shuttle, Space Station,” Houston Chronicle, 16 June 2007.
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