Template:Did you know nominations/LACE (satellite)

LACE (satellite)

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LACE being serviced before launch

... that the Low-power Atmospheric Compensation Experiment (LACE) (pictured) was the first Department of Defense satellite launched on a commercial launch vehicle?

Source: https://www.newspapers.com/article/florida-today-delta-deploys-star-wars/83284498/

"The Delta's thundering ascent marked the first time the Defense Department purchased a rocket and launch services from a private company instead of NASA."

- ALT1: ... that the 150 ft (46m) long retractable booms on the LACE satellite (pictured) were the longest ever put in space at the time of launch?

- Source: Amato, Ivan. "13". Taking Technology Higher The Naval Center for Space Technology and the Making of the Space Age (p. 252)

https://www.nrl.navy.mil/Portals/38/PDF%20Files/Taking_Technology_Higher_Amato.pdf "In the initial days and weeks after the LACE launch, he and colleagues spent many hours at the Blossom Point ground station in southern Maryland checking the spacecraft’s systems, which included, among other superlatives, the longest retractable

booms that had ever flown in space"

- ALT2: ... that the Ultraviolet Plume Instrument onboard the LACE satellite (pictured) tracked rocket plumes from space for the United States's Star Wars program?

- Source: Naval Research Laboratory (October 1, 1991). "LACE" (PDF). Defense Technical Information Center. Washington DC: Naval Research Laboratory. Retrieved April 4, 2024.

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA339075.pdf (p. 2): "SDIO [Strategic Defense Initiative Organization] began discussing the addition of an instrument to take video images of rocket plumes by their UV emission."

Images on pp. 20-22, some color versions at https://web.archive.org/web/20070916140820/http://code8200.nrl.navy.mil/uvpi.html, or on Commons

- Reviewed:
- Comment: Hook: technically LACE was launched alongside another "Star Wars" satellite as a dual payload on the same rocket, however, LACE was deployed first so it still was the "first" satellite launched/deployed in the mission

AltHook: I would love to say that these were the longest booms *ever* deployed in space, but I haven't found any up-to-date sources or papers stating that.
AltHook2: "Star Wars" is the popular nickname for the Strategic Defense Initiative program

Created by SpacePod9 (talk). Number of QPQs required: 0. Nominator has less than 5 past nominations.

SpacePod9 (talk) 08:47, 6 June 2024 (UTC).

General eligibility:

New enough:
Long enough:
Other problems:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: None required.

Overall: main, ALT1 and ALT2 all verified Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:00, 7 June 2024 (UTC)