UASO Constellation-1 Mission a Success

Cape Canaveral, FL- On Wednesday January 20th, 2010 at 6:04 pm EST, the UASO successfully kicked off its Constellation program with the successful launch of a Titan-34D launch vehicle carrying a Boing BSS 702 satellite.

The launch was streamed live via the UASO website and ustream tv.  The launch went smoothly and flawlessly and resulted in the Centaur-D/C-01 satellite stack being placed into a 152.1 x 220.8 km low earth orbit (LEO) at an altitude of 152 km.

The Guidance Systems Officer reports satellite solar panel deployment occured on Saturday January 23, 2010 at 2:23 am EST.  The next step in the Constellation-1 mission is for the Flight Director to officially deem the mission complete and to hand over control of the spacecraft from Mission Control in Cape Canaveral to Constellation Program Mission Control (CPMC) located in the Oberth Unnammed Systems Research Center (OUSRC) in Cleveland, OH.  CPMC is where the Constellation program will be monitored for the duration of the satellite constellation’s life-time.

All mission information will be released upon the Flight Director’s declaration of a mission complete and will be posted on the UASO website located at http://www.vuaso.org/

To view the recorded launch coverage, please visit: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/uaso-tv