Lewis (satellite)
| Lewis | |
|---|---|
| Type: | Earth observation satellite |
| Country: |
 United States
|
| Operator: |
 NASA
|
| COSPAR-ID : | 1997-044A |
| Mission dates | |
| Begin: | August 23, 1997, 06:51 UTC |
| Starting place: | Vandenberg SLC-6 |
| Launcher: | LMLV-1 LM-2 |
| Flight duration: | 36 days |
| Status: | burned up on September 28, 1997 |
| Orbit data | |
| Rotation time : | 87, 1min |
| Orbit inclination : | 97.5 ° |
| Apogee height : | 134 km |
| Perigee height : | 124 km |
Lewis was an experimental observation satellite of NASA , who on August 23, 1997 at 06:51 UTC with a LMLV-1 rocket (later Athena ) from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California was started.
The start itself was successful, however, due to an imprecise control nozzle, Lewis got into an unstable and uncontrollable twist around the x-axis on August 26th and could no longer align the solar panels to the sun, which led to the loss of contact with the ground stations. On September 28th, Lewis burned up on re-entry into the earth's atmosphere.
Lewis was on an SSTI program mission to use new technology to demonstrate cost and time savings in space missions. Lewis was built by TRW . The aim of the mission was to test new types of earth observation sensors.
As the second satellite of the SSTI program, Clark was supposed to start in mid-1997, but this was stopped after the loss of Lewis in March 1998. The Lewis and Clark satellites were named after the Lewis and Clark expedition .
Web links
- NASA's SSTI program ( Memento from September 4, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- Message about the loss of the satellite (English)
- Lewis on Gunter's Space Page (with final satellite design illustration)
Individual evidence
- ^ Lewis in the Encyclopedia Astronautica , accessed March 28, 2012 (English).