Washington – April 30, 1999 – The Air Force announced late Friday the Military communications satellite lifted towards orbit earlier in the day by an Air Force Titan IVB rocket was not in its proper orbit.
All indications are that the rocket’s Centaur upper stage had not completed its series of firings, although military officials were not ready to place a specific cause for the incident, the second failure of a military satellite in two weeks.
“We are very disappointed at the results of today’s launch,” said Gen. Randall Starbucks, Commander of the 45th Space Wing, Cape Canaveral Florida. The wing performed the launch.
The launch took place at 12:30PM EDT Friday and appeared to go normally. But at 5:30pm EDT a somber Starbucks said that tracking radars indicated that the Milstar communications satellite wasn’t at its proper transfer orbit, which would have aimed the craft towards GTO at 22,000 miles up.
In fact, the Air Force didn’t yet know if the Milstar was in orbit at all. A review of the rocket’s telemetry was underway, the Air Force said.
Another Titan IVB was being readied to loft a classified satellite from Vandenberg Air Base in California May 7th. Starbucks refused to speculate if that launch would be delayed as a result of today’s malfunction.
A early warning satellite launched aboard a Titan IVB was also placed in the wrong orbit in April following launch from Cape Canaveral. But the rocket stage that malfunctioned was different than the unit, a Centaur, that was used in Friday’s flight.
