The U.S. Department of Energy's Multispectral Thermal Imager (MTI) satellite was placed into low Earth orbit March 12 by an Orbital Sciences Taurus rocket. Liftoff occurred at 0929 UTC (01:29 PST) from pad 576-East at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. MTI is designed to spend three years in space testing new imaging technologies that might be used by future spy satellites. The 610 kg (1345 lbm) satellite carries a sophisticated telescope that collects day and night images of the Earth in 15 spectral bands ranging from the visible to long-wave infrared. If the techniques work, they could detect facilities on Earth suspected of producing nuclear or chemical weapons of mass destruction. The satellite was designed and built by a government and industry team led by Sandia National Laboratories, including the Air Force Research Laboratory, Ball Aerospace, Raytheon, and TRW. MTI will fly in a 555 km (360 nmi) circular sun-synchronous orbit inclined at 97 degrees to earth's equator.
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