Remote Sensing Launches

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Black Days in Remote Sensing

Space scientists attribute the large degree of failure to the working degree of precision that is demanded of satellites operating several hundred kilometres away from ground control. Even a tiny fault would jeopardise an entire mission.

• 9 August 1993: NOAA 13 failure

• 5 Oct 1993: Landsat 6 launch fails due to Attitude control failure
  • Press release: Landsat 6 failure attributed to ruptured manifold

• 14 November 1996: SPOT 3 lost
  • SPOT 3 out of action
  • SPOT 3 definitively out of action
  • SPOT 1 operational again

• 30 June 1997: Adios ADEOS
  • Press releases

    Due to a problem with the solar array.
    The collapse of the Japanese ADEOS-1 was due to a minute layer of expoxy resin sandwiched along the middle of a paddle that virtually destroyed the mission.

• 26 August 1997: Lewis starts spinning three days after launch
  • Lewis spacecraft
  • September 28: Lewis satellite re-entered

• 2 November 1997: First Brazilian-made rocket fails during launch

  Atop the four-stage rocket was the Brazilian-made Data Gathering
  Satellite-2A (SCD-2A) spacecraft. The 250-pound satellite was to orbit 465
  miles above Earth gather environmental and agricultural data.
  

• 24 December 97: EarlyBird
  EarthWatch Successfully Launches EarlyBird Imaging Satellite
  Mission controllers lost contact on December 28, 1997
  Efforts continue to salvage EarthWatch satellite
  EarlyBird 1 Status

• 22 January 1998: Ofek-4
  Israeli launch of spy satellite ends in failure

Success Stories

• 4 April 1997: DMSP 5D S-14
• 25 April 1997: GOES-10
• 10 June 1997: Feng Yun 2
• 1 August 1997: OrbView-2 aka SeaStar/SeaWiFS
• 2 September 1997: Meteosat-7

• September 28: IRS-1D launch
• September 29: Major space launch for India successful
• September 29: India Successfully Launches IRS-1D Remote Sensing Satellite
• Problems with the orbit? See Jonathan's Space Report

  News reports confirm that the Indian PSLV rocket entered the wrong
  orbit. Apparently the fourth stage, PS-4, may have had a fuel leak
  causing a premature shutdown. The IRS-1D satellite does have a small
  amount of fuel for precise orbit control which could be used to raise
  the perigee, but this will shorten its operational life considerably.
  
  Source: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/QEDT/jcm/space/jsr/latest.html
  

  Was launched in a bad orbit: 300 x 823 km The correction to the initial orbit
  would have consumed too much fuel so the satellite was placed in an elliptical
  orbit.
  
  Source: http://www.TELE-satellit.com/tse/online/sat_irs_1d.html
  

  Preliminary analyses indicate that a valve on the
  fourth stage engine's pressure regulator opened inadvertently, resulting in a loss
  of thrust, Kasturirangan said. (Space News)
  

  
  
• 9 October 1997: IRS-1D to start operations soon

• 18 November 1997: Resurs-F1M
  Russia launches Earth-imaging satellite

• 27 November 97: TRMM
  First images

• 17 Feb 1998: SPIN-2
  18 Feb 98: Say cheese: U.S. company teams up with russians to photograph America from space
  7 April 98: Aerial Images scores touchdown with Russian rocket

• 24 March 98, SPOT 4 successfully launched!
  The French SPOT 4 remote sensing satellite was launched on Mar 24. Developed by Matra Marconi Space/Toulouse for CNES, the 2755 kg satellite provides 10-m resolution images with a wide field of view. SPOT 4 also carries a wide field 'vegetation' imager and a laser communications experiment. Launch was by an Arianespace Ariane 40 rocket, the base Ariane 4 model with no strap-on boosters. The liquid hydrogen fuelled third stage of the Ariane 40 entered an 800 km sun-synchronous orbit together with SPOT 4.
  Source: Jonathan's Space Report

  First SPOT 4 images

• 13 May 98, NOAA-K successfully launched!
  Press release: NOAA-K weather satellite successfully launched
  SOCC Morning report
  Daily status report

• 10 July 98, Resurs-O1#4 successfully launched!
  These smaller systems/satellites were also lifted with the same launch:
  • IRIS-1, Belgium (attached to Resurs)
  • SAFIR-2, Germany
  • TMSAT, Thailand
  • Gurwin TechSAT-1B, Israel
  • WESTPAC, Australia
  • FaSAT-Bravo, Chile
  More info HERE

• 22 Oct 98, SCD-2 successfully launched!

• 27 Jan 1999: ROCSAT-1 launched.

• 2 April 1999: INSAT 2E launched.

• 15 April 1999: Landsat 7 launched.
  Boeing Delta II Launches Landsat-7 Spacecraft
  Landsat status
  Landsat-7 + EO-1 comparison

Wim Bakker