[Satellite TODAY 01-25-13] Orbital Sciences is celebrating the tenth anniversary of successful operation for its Solar and Radiation Climate Experiment (SORCE) satellite, the company announced Jan. 25.

   SORCE was launched into orbit in 2003 aboard Orbital’s Pegasus rocket in a mission that originated from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The original plan for the satellite’s mission was to provide continuous solar climate science and Earth atmospheric data for five years. Ten years later, the program’s Mission Operations Center at the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) is still receiving data that is shared with the worldwide science community.

   “The SORCE mission is an ideal example of how academia, government and industry can partner to advance science investigations and our understanding of the world around us.  The Principal Investigator model for developing and operating high-value science missions has proven to be very successful on programs like SORCE and NASA-funded Explorer-class missions,” Orbital Vice President of Business Development Rob Fulton said in a statement. “The SORCE program is an excellent example of this model, with the spacecraft and overall mission doubling the duration originally planned for the program.”