The Iridium mobile communications network, in spite of its past financial troubles, has set remarkably high operating standards in satellite constellation manufacturing, launching and operations. The Motorola team that built the satellites likely never would have imagined that the constellation would still in orbit 16 years after the original 72 spacecraft were launched, without a failure, on U.S., Russian and Chinese rockets in less than 13 months. Twenty-three spares were launched between 1998 and 2002. The Iridium network operations team in Leesburg, Virgina, has been writing its own playbook in maintaining operational capability as Iridium Communications awaits the launch of its second-generation system. Those launches - 10 satellites each on seven SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets - are scheduled to start in September. The Iridium story has produced two recent books with very different vantage points. Durrell Hillis, who ran Motorola's defense and space group, has written an insiders' technical assessment in Creating Iridium: How a Remarkable Team Made Space History. Journalist John Bloom's Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story (How a Single Man Saved the World's Largest Satellite Constellation from Fiery Destruction) focuses on the successful effort to save Iridium from shutting down after its first owners declared bankruptcy.
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