TDRS-1

History

During that period, a severe storm contaminated TDRS-1 while it was inside the Payload Change-out Room on the Rotating Service Structure. The satellite was returned to its checkout facility for cleaning and rechecking. Challenger lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at 18:30:00 UTC on 4 April 1983. After deployment, an Inertial Upper Stage with two solid rocket motors was to raise TDRS-1 to geosynchronous orbit.

The first burn succeeded, but the second burn went out of control. TDRS-1 separated from the upper stage in a lower orbit than planned. Engineers from the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland worked nearly three months using six one-pound thrusters to push the satellite 8600 miles higher. The failure was traced to a collapsed second-stage nozzle techroll seal.

Thirty-nine adjustment burns corrected the elliptical orbit to the desired 22300-mile geosynchronous orbit. On 26 November 1984, Goddard Space Flight Center honored 34 individuals with the Robert H. Goddard Award of Merit for the rescue. In 1989, a geomagnetic storm affected satellite operations. On 28 April 1999, TDRS-1 was used at the South Pole for the first pole-to-pole phone call, with an Iridium phone at the North Pole, recorded in Ripley's Believe It Or Not and Guinness World Records.