The satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on December 18th, 1999, aboard an Atlas IIAS vehicle and began collecting data on February 24th, 2000. It was placed into a near-polar, sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of, with a 10:30am descending node.
Mission
Terra carries a payload of five remote sensors designed to monitor the state of Earth's environment and ongoing changes in its climate system:
ASTER ASTER creates high-resolution images of clouds, ice, water and the land surface using 3 different sensor subsystems. They are the Shortwave Infrared ; Thermal Infrared ; and Visible and Near Infrared. They cover 14 multi-spectral bands from visible to the thermal infrared. The SWIR stopped working in 2008. ASTER was provided by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry.
CERES
MISR
MODIS
MOPITT
Data from the satellite helps scientists better understand the spread of pollution around the globe. Studies have used instruments on Terra to examine trends in global carbon monoxide and aerosol pollution. The data collected by Terra will ultimately become a new, 15-year global data set. After launch, operators observed that high energy protons like those found over the South Atlantic Anomaly or the poles could induce single-event upsets that would cause the Motor Drive Assembly Built-In Test Equipment to turn off the MDA. These false shut-downs occur 12-14 times a month and eventually the operations team automated the recovery to reduce the impact of these shut-downs. Starting in 2007, increased thermal resistance in the SWIR cryocooler of the ASTER instrument caused the temperature to gradually increase. By 2008, despite frequent attempts to recycle the cryocooler the data began to significantly degrade and on January 12, 2009, ASTER managers declared the SWIR no longer functional due to anomalously high SWIR detector temperatures. Data gathered after April 2008 was declared not usable. On October 13, 2009, Terra suffered a single battery cell failure anomaly and a battery heater control anomaly likely the result of a Micrometeoroid or Orbital Debris strike.
Malicious cyber activities
In June and October 2008 the spacecraft was targeted by hackers who gained unauthorized access to its command and control systems, but did not issue any commands.
