What happened to the Icarus satellite, did it fly?
The Icarus spacecraft and its team was at Marshall Space Flight center performing pre-ship testing and mission operation simulations in February 2003. At this time, following the tragedy of Space Shuttle Columbia, the decision was made by NASA to remove the ProSEDS mission from its scheduled launch date of March 29, 2003. Discussions between the International Space Station offfice, NASA Headquarters, and the ProSEDS project continued until October 2003 to evaluate the starting altitude of the mission. Due to the combination of a drastically reduced starting altitude and a launch timeframe during a period approaching solar minimum, the electrodynamic propulsion performance of the ProSEDS system was no longer sufficient to meet the mission objectives. Furthermore, the increased aerodynamic drag relative to the electrodynamic thrust, combined with a significantly shorter mission duration due to decreased available tether power, would have made the measurement of the electrodynamic thrust
