C/NOFS
C/NOFS, or Communications/Navigation Outage Forecasting System was a satellite developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles Directorate to investigate and forecast scintillations in the Earth's ionosphere. It was launched by an Orbital Sciences Corporation Pegasus-XL rocket at 17:01 GMT on 16 April 2008. It decayed on 28 November 2015.
The satellite, which was operated by the USAF STP, allowed the US military to predict the effects of ionospheric activity on signals from communication and navigation satellites, outages of which could potentially cause problems in battlefield situations.
C/NOFS had a three-axis stabilisation system, and was equipped with seven sensors. It was placed into a low Earth orbit with orbital inclination of 13°, a perigee of 400 km and an apogee of 850 km. It carried the CINDI experiment for NASA. Launch was originally scheduled for 2003, but was delayed due to a number of issues.
Scientific instruments on board
The spacecraft payload consists of the following instruments:
