The Region - News from Oct. 12, 1986

Launch of a research satellite that spent 15 years on display at the Smithsonian Museum was postponed for several weeks because of problems with the guidance system, officials at Vandenberg Air Force Base said. The satellite, nicknamed Polar Bear (Polar Beacon Experiments and Auroral Research), contains three experiments aimed at improving communications between ground stations and weather and surveillance satellites that orbit Earth’s poles. The vehicle started out as a Navy navigation satellite, but was used only in the development phase. It was never flown and eventually was placed on display at the Washington museum. “Most of the parts were flight-qualified. We had a model that looked exactly like it and did not have the flight-qualified hardware, so we traded,” said an Air Force spokesman. The government saved $2 million by recycling the equipment.