The Near Field Infrared Experiment (NFIRE) was a satellite that was proposed and developed by the

Missile Defense Agency The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is the section of the United States government's Department of Defense responsible for developing a layered defense against ballistic missiles. It had its origins in the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) which ...

, a division of the

United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national secu ...

. It was launched atop a

Minotaur rocket The Minotaur is a family of United States solid fuel launch vehicles derived from converted Minuteman and Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). They are built by Northrop Grumman via contract with the Air Force Space and M ...

, from

Wallops Island Wallops Island is a island in Accomack County, Virginia, part of the Virginia Barrier Islands that stretch along the eastern seaboard of the United States of America. It is just south of Chincoteague Island, a popular tourist destination. W ...

, at 06:48

GMT Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is the mean solar time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, counted from midnight. At different times in the past, it has been calculated in different ways, including being calculated from noon; as a cons ...

on 24 April 2007. Though primarily designed to gather data on exhaust plumes from rockets, the satellite was also intended to contain a

kill vehicle Kill vehicle is a term from space weapon development and science fiction which denotes either a kinetic projectile or an explosive warhead supposed to impact on or (in the case of the warhead) near a target. It is the final missile stage of an inte ...

similar to kinds intended for the

Strategic Defense Initiative The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derisively nicknamed the "''Star Wars'' program", was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons (intercontinental ballistic ...

. A missile was then to be fired at and nearly miss the instrumented kill vehicle. This feature was later removed. NFIRE was funded by $44 million in FY2004. In 2004, the

United States House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the Lower house, lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the United States Senate, Senate being ...

instructed the

, MDA, to remove the kill vehicle from the planned 2006 NFIRE launch, approving $68 million in FY2005 subject to that condition. The

Senate Appropriations Committee The United States Senate Committee on Appropriations is a standing committee of the United States Senate. It has jurisdiction over all discretionary spending legislation in the Senate. The Senate Appropriations Committee is the largest committ ...

reviewing the NFIRE program, however, urged the MDA to return the missile defense interceptor (

) to the originally scheduled test, despite the controversial perception of this leading to the deployment of weapons in space. The committee, which approved $13.7 million for the NFIRE program in FY06, told the MDA to “complete development and mission integration of the deployable NFIRE Kill Vehicle.” The MDA removed the kill vehicle portion of the planned test, saying it posed a risk of technical failure, and replaced it with a laser communications payload from

Tesat-Spacecom The Tesat-Spacecom GmbH & Co. KG (TESAT) from Backnang, Germany is an independently operating subsidiary of Airbus Defence and Space which develops, produces and tests communication payloads for international satellite manufacturers. Company ...

. NFIRE reentered the Earth's atmosphere on November 4, 2015.

References

External links

Space Security Index 2005 Space Based Strike Weapons Briefing
{{Orbital launches in 2007 Spacecraft launched in 2007 Spacecraft which reentered in 2015 Missile defense Satellites of the United States Space weapons Spacecraft launched by Minotaur rockets