whole. In 1984, during a major NATO exercise, RAF Flight Lieutenant Mike Hale intercepted a U-2 at a height of , where the aircraft had previously been considered safe from interception. Hale climbed to in his Lightning F3. In 1989, a U-2R of 9th Reconnaissance Wing (RW), Detachment 5, flying out of Patrick Air Force Base, Florida successfully photographed a space shuttle launch for NASA to assist in identifying the cause of tile loss during launch, which had been discovered in the initial post-Challenger missions. On 2 January 1993, an Iraqi MiG-25 Foxbat attempted to intercept a USAF U-2 taking part in UN operations over Iraq. The R-40 (AA-6 Acrid) missile missed the U-2 and the MiG was 'chased off' by F-15 Eagles. On 19 November 1998, a NASA ER-2 research aircraft set a world record for altitude of in horizontal flight in the weight class. General Aviation World Records, Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), Lausanne, Switzerland. Retrieved: 30 June 2011. Twenty-first century The U-2 remains in front-line service more than 60 years after its first flight, with the current U-2 beginning service in 1980. This is due primarily to its ability to change surveillance objectives on short notice, something that surveillance satellites cannot do. In the mid-1990s, it was converted from the U-2R to the U-2S, receiving the GE F118 turbofan engine. The U-2 outlasted its Mach 3 replacement, the SR-71, which was retired in 1998. A classified budget document approved by the Pentagon on 23 December 2005 called for the U-2's termination no earlier than 2012, with some aircraft being retired by 2007. In January 2006, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced the U-2's pending retirement as a cost-cutting measure during a larger reorganization and redefinition of the USAF's mission. Rumsfeld said that this would not impair the USAF's ability to gather intelligence, which would be done by satellites and a growing supply of unmanned RQ-4 Global Hawk reconnaissance aircraft. In 2009, the USAF stated that it planned to extend the U-2 retirement from 2012 until 2014 or later to allow more time to field the RQ-4. Upgrades late in the War in Afghanistan gave the U-2 greater reconnaissance and threat-detection capability. By early 2010, U-2s from the 99th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron had flown over 200 missions in support of Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, as well as Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa. A U-2