International Space Station program ocean was found to be possible only with Russia's assistance. At the time ISS was launched, the Russian Space Agency had experience from de-orbiting the Salyut 4, 5, 6, and 7 space stations, while NASA's first intentional controlled de-orbit of a satellite (the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory) would not occur for another two years. NASA currently has no spacecraft capable of de-orbiting the ISS at the time of decommissioning. Skylab, the only space station built and launched entirely by the US, decayed from orbit slowly over 5 years, and no attempt was made to de-orbit the station using a deorbital
Andover Earth Station Since the satellite was not in a geosynchronous orbit like modern communication satellites, it passed overhead quickly, and the giant antenna had to be precisely steerable to track the satellite as it moved across the sky. Telstar was launched on July 10, 1962 from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and went into orbit at 4:46 a.m. The engineers at the Andover Earth Station would have to wait 15 hours for the satellite, travelling at a rate of 5 miles per second (8 km/s), 3,000 miles (4,800 km) above the earth to reach within their "view". The engineers successfully sent