Lewis (satellite)

Lewis was an experimental Earth observation satellite, NASA, 06:51 UTC with a LMLV - 1 rocket (later Athena ) was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on August 23, 1997.

The launch itself was successful, but Lewis came as a result of inaccurate working Steuerungsdüse on August 26 in unstable and uncontrollable spin around the x- axis and could no longer align to the sun, resulting in the loss of contact to the ground stations, the solar panels. On September 28, Lewis burned up during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.

Lewis was a mission of the SSTI program, in the use of new technologies to reduce costs and time should be shown for space missions. Lewis was built by TRW. Objective of the mission was to test new Earth observation sensors.

The second satellite of the SSTI Clark program should start in mid-1997, but this was stopped after the loss of Lewis in March 1998. The satellite Lewis and Clark were named after the Lewis and Clark Expedition.