Space

After a two-week delay, a Dept. of Energy research and development satellite was successfully launched early Sunday in a bid to test the U.S. government's ability to remotely monitor the production of nuclear and chemical weapons around the globe.

Flight engineers expect the first details of the satellite's health status at approximately 3:30 p.m. EST when it makes its initial pass over the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The launch had been set for February 28, but the French Polynesian government lodged a protest with the U.S Air Force three days prior to liftoff over concerns that one of the rocket's stages could strike a tiny inhabited South Pacific island.

After some international wrangling, the French Polynesians again granted permission to launch on March 8 after it was determined the atoll in question did not lie within the imaginary ellipse where the rocket's third stage was predicted to fall to Earth.

Once operating as planned, the 1,305-pound (587-kilogram) satellite will peer down on the Earth with a telescopic eye, "seeing" in 15 spectral bands, from the visible to the long-wave infrared.

The MTI will take only six images per pass during its three years in a 360-mile (576-kilometer) polar orbit, focusing instead on a few choice locations across the United States.

The DOE selected those government, industrial and natural locations to test the MTI's ability to discern the effects of known weapons production-related activities. Data simultaneously collected at ground level will then be used to confirm the satellite's prowess.

Confirmation that MTI can spy from space what is more readily identifiable from the ground could then lead to future satellites that could be pressed into the hunt for previously unknown or undisclosed weapons factories across the globe.

Pike added that the effort parallels ground truthing work that went on 40 years ago in determining the capabilities of the U-2 spy planes and Corona spy satellites.

Waldron stressed that the MTI is merely a testbed.

"We are just trying to prove out the technology, that there is a pony you could ride," Waldron said. Indeed, MTI will be the only the third DOE satellite - and likely the last.

"It's just the things cost too damned much," Waldron said of the $150-million satellite.

The satellite will also be able to map chemical spills, vegetation health and volcanic activity. More than 100 researchers drawn from 50 different defense and civilian agencies intend to work on MTI-gathered data.

Engineers boast the satellite will be the most radiometrically accurate instrument of its kind to ever fly in space, meaning it can determine with a high degree of precision the brightness of an object.

Brightness, the result of either reflected sunlight or thermal emissions, can indicate the presence of dust associated with ore processing or the large amounts of heat produced by a nuclear reactor.

Pike said the satellite is a child of the post-Cold War, where the production of weapons of mass destruction has been scaled down.

"One of the fundamental problems that we've got in the post-Cold War world is that special weapons programs in countries we are worried about, like North Korea, Iran and Iraq, are substantially smaller than the Soviet programs," Pike said. "The Soviet chemical weapons program, you couldn't miss, it was so big.

"MTI operates under the theory you might not be able to tell the chemical weapons facility by the shape of the roof, but I might be able to detect it by the gas it is giving off, changes in vegetation and other less evident signatures."

The satellite will also carry a high-energy X-ray spectrometer (HXRS) that will collect data on solar flares that could endanger astronauts and harm spacecraft.

"Most of the time the satellite is just sitting there, so we put HXRS on the back to look at the sun when we're not doing anything else," Brock said.