Trajectory & orbital insertion
Ascent path is a representation — true ascent telemetry isn’t public.
Provider
United States Air Force
Provider type
Government
Orbit
Direct-GEO
Mission type
Government/Top Secret
Launch site
United States of America
Date
Sat, 08 Nov 1997 02:05:01 GMT
Orbital launch #
#4189 ever
Mission
Trumpet signal intelligence satellites were launched by Titan-4(01)A Centaur-T into highly elliptic Molniya-type orbits. In their elliptical orbits they would move very slowly over the northern hemisphere for most of their orbital period, allowing interception of microwave line-of-sight communications beams. Since they would move slowly through the beams during their orbit, a constellation of such satellites was required to monitor Soviet communications throughout the day.