Long-Lived NASA Polar
Satellite, Built By Lockheed Martin, Ends Service After 12 Productive
Years
(29 April 2008) After more than 12
years of collecting valuable data on how Earth's space environment is affected
by continual bombardment from radiation and particles from the Sun, NASA has
decommissioned its Polar spacecraft.
Polar - built by Lockheed
Martin - was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on February 24, 1996 and
was the second element in NASA's Global Geospace Science (GGS) program. In an
orbit that loops over the Earth's poles, the Polar spacecraft and its
instruments have enabled scientists to study the movement of energetic charged
particles above the polar regions.
The original requirement for the
Polar mission was that it would operate for a minimum of two years, yet the
small but robust satellite and its instruments continued sending back valuable
data until this week. The unique treasure trove of information has yielded more
than a thousand papers in refereed scientific journals and will continue to
provide researchers a fertile field of discovery for years to come.
The
other spacecraft in NASA's GGS program, called Wind, was also built by Lockheed
Martin. It was launched on November 1, 1994 and continues to operate in orbit
around the L-1 libration point about one one-hundredth of the way from the
Earth to the Sun, where the gravitational pull of the Earth and Sun and
centrifugal force balance in such a way as to give an orbit of exactly one
Earth year. The objectives of the Wind mission are to provide complete plasma,
energetic particle, and magnetic field input for magnetospheric and ionospheric
studies; determine the magnetospheric output to interplanetary space in the
up-stream region: and investigate basic plasma processes occurring in the
near-Earth solar wind.
"We are enormously pleased with the performance
and longevity of both Polar and Wind," said Mark Valerio, vice president and
general manager of special programs at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company,
and formerly the company's deputy program manager of the Polar and Wind
spacecraft design and construction. "The name Lockheed Martin typically is
associated with large spacecraft, yet the company has a long heritage as a
nimble, responsive source for smaller, cutting-edge satellite systems delivered
quickly, and Polar and Wind are prime examples of our diverse
capability."
The NASA GGS program is part of a larger effort called the
International Solar Terrestrial Physics (ISTP) program that was mounted by
NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Japanese Institute of Space and
Astronautical Science. The fleet of spacecraft flown represented a
collaborative effort to better understand how energy is generated deep within
the Sun, how it radiates to the surface, crosses space to eventually reach the
near-Earth environment, and, finally, how that energy affects the
Earth.
In addition to building the Polar and Wind spacecraft, Lockheed
Martin's Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto, Calif. built and/or designed
six instruments for various ISTP spacecraft. PIXIE (the Polar Ionospheric X-ray
Imaging Experiment), TIMAS (for Toroidal Imaging Mass Angle Spectrograph) and
SEPS (the Source/Loss Cone Energetic Particle Spectrometer experiment) all flew
on Polar; the Michelson Doppler Imager flew on the ESA/NASA Solar and
Heliospheric Observatory; and ESA's Cluster spacecraft carried the EDI
(Electron Drift Investigation) and CIS (Co-ordinated Ion Spectroscopy)
instruments.
The Lockheed Martin Space Systems Advanced Technology
Center is a world-class provider of advanced scientific and space technologies,
prototypes, and research for physical, electronic, information/computing,
materials, engineering, and electro-optical applications.
Lockheed
Martin Space Systems Company, a major operating unit of Lockheed Martin
Corporation, designs, develops, tests, manufactures and operates a full
spectrum of advanced-technology systems for national security, civil and
commercial customers. Chief products include human space flight systems; a full
range of remote sensing, navigation, meteorological and communications
satellites and instruments; space observatories and interplanetary spacecraft;
laser radar; fleet ballistic missiles; and missile defence
systems.
Headquartered in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed Martin employs about
140,000 people world-wide and is principally engaged in the research, design,
development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology
systems, products and services. The Corporation reported 2007 sales of US$ 41.9
billion.
(source: Lockheed Martin)
