February 26, 1998The launch of the Student Nitric Oxide Explorer (SNOE) spacecraft aboard an Orbital Sciences Pegasus rocket occurred as planned on Feb. 25 at 11:05 p.m. PST. The Pegasus was dropped from an L-1011 aircraft 100 miles west of Monterey, CA, over the Pacific Ocean.
"It was a quiet and uneventful countdown," said NASA Launch Manager Ray Lugo. "The launch was perfect."
The first data from the spacecraft was received at 12:30 a.m. PST by the Poker Flats, AK, tracking station and relayed to the NASA telemetry facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA.
"After the first orbit, the data from the spacecraft was exactly what we were hoping to see," said Dr. Charles Barth, SNOE Principal Investigator from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
SNOE is an Earth-orbiting satellite designed and built by a team of Boulder students, faculty and engineers who were selected to develop the mission by the Universities Space Research Association with funding from NASA. SNOE carries an ultraviolet spectrometer and two photometers to measure the effects of the sun's x-ray radiation and magnetic field on nitric oxide production. This is believed to affect the variability in the Earth's upper atmosphere.