USA-196, also known as GPS IIR-17(M), GPS IIRM-4 and GPS SVN-55, is an American navigation satellite which forms part of the

Global Positioning System The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of the global navigation satellite sy ...

. It was the fourth of eight Block IIRM satellites to be launched, and the seventeenth of twenty one Block IIR satellites overall. It was built by

Lockheed Martin The Lockheed Martin Corporation is an American aerospace, arms, defense, information security, and technology corporation with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta in March 1995. It ...

, using the

AS-4000 The Kh-22 (russian: Х-22; AS-4 'Kitchen') is a large, long-range anti-ship missile developed by MKB Raduga in the Soviet Union. It was designed for use against aircraft carriers and carrier battle groups, with either a conventional or nuclear wa ...

satellite bus A satellite bus (or spacecraft bus) is the main body and structural component of a satellite or spacecraft, in which the payload and all scientific instruments are held. Bus-derived satellites are opposed to specially produced satellites. Bus-d ...

. USA-196 was launched at 12:23:00 UTC on 17 October 2007, atop a

Delta II Delta II was an expendable launch system, originally designed and built by McDonnell Douglas. Delta II was part of the Delta rocket family and entered service in 1989. Delta II vehicles included the Delta 6000, and the two later Delta 7000 va ...

carrier rocket, flight number D328, flying in the 7925-9.5 configuration. The launch took place from Space Launch Complex 17A at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and placed USA-196 into a transfer orbit. The satellite raised itself into

medium Earth orbit A medium Earth orbit (MEO) is an geocentric orbit, Earth-centered orbit with an altitude above a low Earth orbit (LEO) and below a high Earth orbit (HEO) – between above sea level.

using a

Star-37FM The Star is a family of US solid-propellant rocket motors originally developed by Thiokol and used by many space propulsion and launch vehicle stages. They are used almost exclusively as an upper stage, often as an apogee kick motor. Three Star 3 ...

apogee motor An apogee kick motor (AKM) is a rocket motor that is regularly employed on artificial satellites to provide the final impulse to change the trajectory from the transfer orbit into its final (most commonly circular) orbit. For a satellite laun ...

. By 27 October 2007, USA-196 was in an orbit with a

perigee An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. For example, the apsides of the Earth are called the aphelion and perihelion. General description There are two apsides in any ellip ...

of , an

apogee An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. For example, the apsides of the Earth are called the aphelion and perihelion. General description There are two apsides in any ellip ...

of , a period of 717.94 minutes, and 54.8 degrees of

inclination Orbital inclination measures the tilt of an object's orbit around a celestial body. It is expressed as the angle between a Plane of reference, reference plane and the orbital plane or Axis of rotation, axis of direction of the orbiting object ...

to the equator. It is used to broadcast the PRN 15 signal, and operates in slot 2 of plane F of the GPS constellation. The satellite has a design life of 10 years and a mass of . As of 2015 it remains in service.

References

Spacecraft launched in 2007 GPS satellites USA satellites {{US-spacecraft-stub