A Pegasus-XL carrier rocket, air-launched by a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar flying from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, has placed the much-delayed C/NOFS satellite into a low Earth orbit.
C/NOFS, which stands for Communications/Navigation Outage Forecasting System, will investigate and forecast scintillations in the Earth's ionosphere, which are responsible for degradation of signals from navigation and communications satellites. It was originally scheduled to launch in 2003, but owing to a string of delays, it was finally launched at 17:01 GMT today. It will be operated by the Air Force Research Laboratory and Space Test Program offices of the United States Air Force.
The launch was conducted by Orbital Sciences Corporation. It is the first launch of a Pegasus rocket in almost a year. The next Pegasus is scheduled to launch in July, with NASA's IBEX satellite. The launch of C/NOFS is the 17 launch to orbit this year and the 39 orbital Pegasus launch.

Have an opinion on this story? Share it!
Share this: 






This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.
Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.
Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.
Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.
Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.
Pegasus rocket launches C/NOFS satellite