Satellite Placed in Orbit Despite Heater Problem
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — A new weather satellite was locked into stationary orbit above the Atlantic Ocean on Friday by a motor fired one day early because of a heater problem.
“The firing went fine; there were no problems,†said Larry Heacock, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s satellite operations center.
The $55-million GOES-7 satellite was launched Thursday by a Delta rocket. The on-board motor was triggered Friday by a radio command from a ground station when the satellite neared its high point in orbit.
The firing placed the satellite in stationary orbit at 22,237 miles high. At that altitude, a spacecraft travels at the same speed as the rotation of the Earth and thus hovers over one spot on the globe.
GOES-7, which stands for geo-stationary operational environmental satellite, will join a sister satellite, GOES-6, to keep an eye on weather patterns in a wide area ranging from the mid-Pacific to the eastern Atlantic and including all of the United States.
Heacock said that soon after the launching, trackers detected that the motor that would kick GOES-7 into stationary orbit was overheating, apparently because of a faulty thermostat on a heater.
“We switched to the backup heater, but it started to run off, too,†he said. “The solution was to control the temperature by watching it and turning the heater on when necessary.â€
Because this required constant attention, he said, the decision was made to ignite the motor a day earlier than planned.
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