Minotaur I Boosts Experimental Satellites Aloft

An Orbital Sciences Corporation Minotaur I rocket launched from Virginia's Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport 07:00 EST on Saturday morning. Aboard was a USAF TacSat-2 satellite and a NASA GeneSat-1.

TacSat-2 will help the military quickly transmit digital imagery among commanders. GeneSat-1 carries a harmless strain of E. coli bacteria as part of an experiment to study the long-term effects of spaceflight on living organisms.

Mission director USAF Colonel Samuel McCraw told the Associated Press, "We can now confirm that both satellites are alive and kicking. It's still too early to know how they're doing, but both have woken up and started talking."

Virginia's Commercial Space Flight Authority built the spaceport on land leased from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on the Virginia coast in 1998. Saturday's launch was the facility's first.

Spaceport directory Billie Reed said, "It's been a lot of work, it's been a long road, but today we showed we can do it. We're in business for real."

The Minotaur I is built from decommissioned Minuteman ICBMs and two stages from Pegasus rockets.

A software glitch caused a week-long delay for the launch originally planned for last Monday. The problem might have prevented solar panels on the TacSat-2 satellite from properly orienting to the sun resulting in a rapid depletion of its on-board batteries.

Colonel McGraw told the Associated Press the delays added "a couple hundred thousand dollars" to the already considerable mission costs -- estimated to be $60 million.

The next time you think a $10 landing fee is pretty steep at your local regional airport remember this: $621,000 of that $60 million mission cost went to the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport!

FMI: www.orbital.com, www.vaspace.org