Jun 10 2003

From The Space Library

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Current revision

From its floating platform Odyssey, Sea Launch launched a telecommunications satellite Thuraya-2 aboard a Zenit 3-SL rocket. The satellite belonged to Thuraya Satellite Telecommunications Company based in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, a company providing mobile telephone services to more than 100 countries in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Sea Launch had launched Thuraya-1 in October 2000. (Spacewarn Bulletin, no. 596; Associated Press, “Communications Satellite Launched,” 10 June 2003; Jim Banke, “Sea Launch Soars Again Carrying Thuraya-2 to Orbit,” Space.com, http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/zenit_launch_030610.html (accessed 15 December 2008).

NASA launched the first of two Mars Exploration Rovers from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida aboard a Delta 2 rocket. The destination of the 384-pound (174-kilogram) rover Spirit was the Gustev Crater, a site that scientists believed had been a crater lake. NASA intended the second of the identical rovers, called Opportunity, to launch later in June and to land on the opposite side of Mars from the Gustev Crater at a site called Meridiani Planum, which had a large deposit of a type of mineral (gray hematite) that usually forms in wet environments. NASA had designed the rolling rovers to capture sharper images, explore wider regions, and examine rocks better than any previous craft that had landed on Mars, searching for evidence of wet environments on the planet. (NASA, “NASA Prepares Two Robot Rovers for Mars Exploration,” news release 03-189, 4 June 2003, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2003/jun/HQ_03189_ROVERS.html (accessed 12 December 2008); Andrew Bridges for Associated Press, “First of NASA Rovers En Route to Mars,” 11 June 2003.

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