Operations
The first Tracking and Data Relay Satellite was launched in 1983 on the Space Shuttle Challenger's first flight, STS-6. The Boeing-built Inertial Upper Stage that was to take the satellite from Challenger's orbit to its ultimate geosynchronous orbit suffered a failure that caused it not to deliver the TDRS to the correct orbit. As a result, it was necessary to command the satellite to use its onboard rocket thrusters to move it into its correct orbit. This expenditure of fuel reduced its capability to remain in a geostationary orbit, and this TDRS, in orbit for a long time, was re-assigned to the part-time mission of supporting communications to Antarctic scientific stations.
The second Tracking and Data Relay Satellite was destroyed along with Challenger shortly after launch during the STS-51-L mission in January 1986. The next five TRW-built TDRSS satellites were successfully launched on other Space Shuttles. Three follow-up Boeing-built satellites were launched by Atlas rockets in 2000 and 2002. A NASA Press Release summarized the capabilities of the system as a whole:
"Working solo, TDRS-1 provided more communication coverage, in support of the September 1983 Shuttle mission, than the entire network of NASA tracking stations had provided in all previous Shuttle missions."
The first generation of TDRS are planned to be retired in 2015.
Read more about this topic: Tracking And Data Relay Satellite
Famous quotes containing the word operations:
“There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A sociosphere of contact, control, persuasion and dissuasion, of exhibitions of inhibitions in massive or homeopathic doses...: this is obscenity. All structures turned inside out and exhibited, all operations rendered visible. In America this goes all the way from the bewildering network of aerial telephone and electric wires ... to the concrete multiplication of all the bodily functions in the home, the litany of ingredients on the tiniest can of food, the exhibition of income or IQ.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)