Jun 4 2000
From The Space Library
NASA de-orbited the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, after nine years in orbit, in a controlled reentry into Earth's atmosphere. Director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Alphonse V. Diaz called the event "a bittersweet day for NASA." The spacecraft, NASA's "gamma-ray equivalent" of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), launched in 1991 with four instruments designed to observe gamma rays. During the course of its impressive tenure, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory had yielded valuable data regarding the previously little-known gamma-ray sky. The 17-ton (15,400-kilogram or 15.4-tonne), US$670 million research craft had orbited Earth for long after its predicted lifespan. Some critics had opposed bringing the craft crashing to Earth while it was still providing useful data. In 1999, however, NASA engineers had detected problems with one of the satellite's control gyroscopes. After considering sending maintenance missions to repair the craft or training the Shuttle crew to capture the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory and bring it back to Earth for service, NASA officials had determined that the prudent response was controlled de-orbit and preemptive destruction of the satellite. NASA engineers used a series of engine burns to guide the satellite in its reentry into Earth's atmosphere and to direct the pieces of debris from the craft to crash into the Pacific Ocean. Like NASA's efforts to control the reentry of Skylab in 1979, this maneuver was one of the first times that NASA had intentionally destroyed one of its own craft by guiding its reentry into Earth's atmosphere.
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