Celestial Mechanics

ORBVIEW 1 (MICROLAB), launched 04/03/1995
1995-017b    23546     orb      98.6      70.0   701       684          1.2886

Description
Microlab 1 is a minisatellite that was launched by a Pegasus rocket carried aloft by an L-1011 aircraft flying out of Vanderberg AFB. The main instrument is a global lightning mapper; the other is a radio receiver to monitor the transmission from any GPS spacecraft that appears near the horizon and to infer the atmospheric temperature and humidity, and the ionospheric total electron content along the path between the GPS and Microlab spacecraft.

Dicipline
Earth Science, Space Physics

WESTPAC, launched 07/10/1998
1998-043d    25397     isra     101.2     98.5   815       814          0.1853

Description
Formerly known as WPLTN-1, Westpac was an Australia geodetic satellite for the joint venture between Australia's Electro Optics and the Russian Space Agency. It was spherical in shape with laser reflectors. It served as a target for the Western Pacific Laser Tracking Network.

Dicipline
Earth Science

IRIDIUM 17, launched 07/09/1997
1997-034a    24869     us       100.4     86.4   779       776          5.8569

Description
Iridium 17 was part of a planned commercial communications network comprised of a constellation of 66 LEO spacecraft. The system uses L-Band to provide global communications services through portable handsets. A total of 125 spacecraft were built by Lockheed for more than $700M. Commercial service began in 1998. The system employs 15-20 ground stations with a master control complex in Landsdowne, VA, a backup in Italy, and a third engineering center in Chandler, AZ. The spacecraft was 3-axis stabilized, with a hydrazine propulsion system. It had 2 solar panels with 1-axis articulation. The system employed L-Band using FDMA/TDMA to provide voice at 4.8 kbps and data at 2400 bps with 16 dB margin. Each satellite had 48 spot beams for Earth coverage and used Ka-Band for crosslinks and ground commanding.

Dicipline
Communications

TRMM, launched 11/27/1997
1997-073b    25062     us       90.1      28.5   284       278          n/a

Description
The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) is a joint mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) designed to monitor and study rainfall over the global tropics and subtropics. The launch vehicle is provided by Japan and the satellite by NASA. The TRMM spacecraft is planned to be a free-flyer launched on an expendable Japanese HII rocket with a low-altitude, non-sun-synchronous orbit. The orbital position of the spacecraft is determined by the TDRSS ranging system. The minimum mission life for TRMM is three years. See http://trmm.gsfc.nasa.gov for more information

Dicipline
Earth Science

UNISAT 2, launched 12/20/2002
2002-058c    27607     saud     97.9      64.6   716       600          0.0832

Description
Unisat is a 12kg, Italian Picosat that was launched from Baikonur by a Dnepr rocket on the Dec/20/2002. It carries a camera and sensors for picking up debris and aerosol.

Dicipline
Engineering

NOAA 16 DEB, launched 09/21/2000
2002-037g    27476     cis      119.8     63.5   1883      1464         0.6095

Description
NOAA 16 continues the fourth-generation of operational, polar orbiting, meteorological satellite series (NOAA K-N) operated by the National Environmental Satellite Service (NESS) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The goal of the NOAA/NESS polar orbiting program is to provide output products used in meteorological prediction and warning, oceanographic and hydrologic services, and space environment monitoring. The spacecraft power is provided by a direct energy transfer system from the single solar array which is comprised of eight panels of solar cells.

Dicipline

CHAMP, launched 07/15/2000
2000-039a    26404     it       87.2      87.2   143       128          2.6401

Description
CHAMP (CHAllenging Minisatellite Payload) is a German environmental research minispacecraft that carries instruments for collecting geophysical, oceanographic, and meteorological data. The 500 kg, triaxially stabilized spacecraft was launched by a Kosmos-3M rocket from Plesetsk with two other satellites.

Dicipline
Earth Science

HETE 2, launched 10/09/2000
2000-060b    26560     fr       89.1      7.9    359       102          29.8363

Description
The High Energy Transient Explorer 2 (HETE-2) is designed to detect cosmic gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and help determine their origin and nature. The goal of the mission is to continuously scan the sky and identify occurences of GRBs, establish precise locations and transmit coordinates in near real time. The instruments are also used to establish relative GRB rates and intensities in the soft X-ray, mid X-ray, and gamma-ray bands, perform spectroscopy of gamma-ray bursts, measure the intensities, time histories, and spectra of soft gamma-ray repeater bursts, X-ray bursts, and black hole X-ray transients. The spacecraft is basically a rectangular cube, roughly one meter by half a meter by half a meter, with four solar panel petals protruding from the bottom. The bottom section of the spacecraft holds the power, communications, and attitude control and the upper section the science instruments. Power is supplied by the solar panels, which are made of honeycomb aluminum with a silicon substrate. Attitude control is achieved by a momentum wheel and three orthogonal magnetic torque coils, controlled by inputs from two magnetometers, twelve sun sensors, and an optical camera.

HETE-2 is placed in a 592 km x 640 km elliptical Earth orbit. The spacecraft always points in the anti-solar direction and all bursts detected will be at least 120 degrees from the Sun. The field of view will be centered roughly on the ecliptic. Over the course of a year approximately 60% of the sky will be surveyed. When GRB's are detected, summary burst data are sent immediately to listen-only equatorial ground stations and are forwarded to observers via the GRB coordinates network within less than 10 seconds of burst detection. The planned operating life is 18 months with probable mission extensions for an additional 6 months or more.

Dicipline
Astronomy

CUTE-1, launched 06/30/2003
2003-031d    27843     ca       101.4     98.7   833       817          0.3909

Description
CUTE 1 is a Japanese (Tokyo Institute of Technology) one kilogram nanosatellite that was launched by a Rokot rocket from Plesetsk on 30 June 2003.

Dicipline
Technology Applications

OSCAR 29, launched 09/16/1987
1987-080a    18361     us       107.1     90.2   1176      1013         1.2421

Description
OSCAR 29 was a US Navy navigation satellite launched by a Scout G rocket. Transit, one of the first operational satellite systems, was also known as the Navy Navigation Satellite (NNS).

The Transit spacecraft were developed for updating the inertial navigation systems on board US Navy Polaris submarines, and later for civilian use. Transit receivers used the known characteristics of the satellite's orbit, measured the Doppler shift of the satellite's radio signal, and thereby calculated the receivers position on the earth. As a single spacecraft travelled overhead, the user measured the Doppler shift over a 15 minute period by receiving timing marks and satellite orbital information on two separate frequencies, 149.99 and 399.97 MHz. These signals were corrected for ionospheric refraction and the information was then fed into the users navigation system. Individual Transit satellites operated for over 10 years. Technical break- throughs during the program included gravity gradient stabilization, the use of radio-isotope thermoelectic generators (RTG), and navigation satellite technologies later used in the GPS system. Transit was superseded by the Navstar global positioning system. The use of the satellites for navigation was discontinued at the end of 1996 but the satellites continued transmitting and became the Navy Ionospheric Monitoring System (NIMS).

Dicipline
Navigation & Global Positioning

WIRE, launched 03/05/1999
1999-010d    25645     cis      1468.7    5.2    36501     36343        1.3609

Description
The Wide-field Infrared Explorer (WIRE) was a two-color, solid hydrogen-cooled, infrared imaging telescope designed to study starburst galaxies and to search for protogalaxies. The science goals of WIRE were to: (1) determine what fraction of the luminosity of the universe at a redshift of >0.5 is due to starburst galaxies; (2) assess how fast and in what ways starburst galaxies evolve; and, (3) examine whether luminous protogalaxies are common at redshifts <3. In order to accomplish these goals, WIRE was to conduct a four month survey at 12 and 25 micrometers over an area of between ten and several hundred square degrees of the sky. The WIRE telescope itself had an entrace aperture of 30 cm and a 32 x 32 arc-minute field of view.

Shortly after launch, while the spacecraft was still tumbling early after orbit insertion, the telescope cover came off prematurely. This resulted in the exposure of the cryogenic materials to light, warming them at a high rate causing outgassing and increasing the rate of spin of the spacecraft beyond the ability of the reaction wheels to slow it. Although ground controllers began work to decrease the excess spin of the spacecraft, they were not able to do so in time to prevent the total loss of the frozen hydrogen used to cool the primary science instrument. Attempts to recover control of the spacecraft were successful, though as a result of the coolant loss, science data was not obtainable.

Dicipline
Astronomy

MOS 1A (MOMO 1), launched 02/19/1987
1987-017b    17526     cis      104.6     82.9   1007      946          5.2732

Description
The Marine Observation Satellite (MOS-1) was Japan's first earth observation satellite. The three-axis stabilized spacecraft carried a Multispectral Electronic Self-scanning Radiometer (MESSR) that collected data from both land and sea, a Visible and Thermal Infrared Radiometer (VTIR) to measure sea surface temperature, a Microwave Scanning Radiometer (MSR) to provide information on sea ice, snowfall, water vapor content at the ocean and in the atmosphere, and a Data Collection System (DCS) transponder to collect observation data from drifting buoys. The spacecraft had a box-type shape with deployable solar panels. It was composed of two cubes, a bus module and a mission module, on which the three sensors were mounted. The spacecraft followed a sun-synchronous orbit with equatorial crossings in the descending node maintained between 10:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. local time. The mission life was designed to be 2 years.

Dicipline
Earth Science

ROCSAT 2, launched 05/20/2004
2004-017b    28253     us       478.8     12.0   27592     201          17.0990

Description
Rocsat 2 is a Taiwanese (ROC) remote sensing satellite that was launched from Vandenberg AFB by a Taurus XL rocket at 17:47 UT on 19 May 2004. The 750 kg satellite carries imaging instruments to take pictures of crop yields in Taiwan, natural disasters, and oil spills on land and ocean, and to image high altitude red lightning strokes called sprites.

Dicipline
Earth Science

TRANSAT, launched 10/28/1977
1977-105b    10456     cis      87.8      62.8   183       152          n/a

Description
Transit-O 11 was a US Navy navigation satellite launched by a Scout D rocket, and is part of the Transit Network. (See Number 10).

Individual Transit satellites operated for over 10 years. Technical break- throughs during the program included gravity gradient stabilization, the use of radio-isotope thermoelectic generators (RTG), and navigation satellite technologies later used in the GPS system. Transit was superseded by the Navstar global positioning system. The use of the satellites for navigation was discontinued at the end of 1996 but the satellites continued transmitting and became the Navy Ionospheric Monitoring System (NIMS).

Dicipline
Navigation & Global Positioning

EO 1, launched 11/21/2000
1975-017c    26618     us       91.7      63.1   605       107          1.9752

Description
EO 1 (Earth Observing mission 1) is the first spacecraft in the American New Millennium Program (NMP) and was launched by a Delta 2 rocket from Vandenberg AFB. The 573 kg spacecraft carries three well-developed instruments (and seven technology-test items) to image Earth's surface in numerous wavelength bands. The Hyperion is a grating-imaging spectrometer and will image the surface i n 220 spectral bands covering 0.4-2.5 micron wavelengths at a resolution of 30 meters. It is expected to provide better crop estimates, and better mineral resource areas than are being provided by Landsat 7. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) is a wide field (15 deg x 1.26 deg) reflective optics telescope that will provide images in 10 wavelength bands covering 0.4-2.4 microns with a spatial resolution of 30 meters. It is designed to produce images that are directly comparable to the ones from the ETM+ (Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus) instrument on board Landsat 7, and thus provide continuity of data. The third instrument, LAC (LEISA Atmospheric Corrector) covers the 0.890-1.600 micron wavelength IR band by means of a wedged etalon filter and three arrays (256 x 256) of In-Ga detectors, each array covering a five deg swath width with a spatial resolution of 250 meters. It will aid in correcting the data from the other instruments for water vapor and cirrus cloud variations. Among the new technology test/demonstration items is the XPAA (X-band Phased Array Antenna) with 64 elements powered by a 160 W transmitter that sends data at a rate of 105 MB per second. Additional information on EO 1 can be obtained from http://eo1.gsfc.nasa.gov/.

Dicipline
Earth Science

MAROC TUBSAT, launched 12/10/2001
2001-056c    27003     paki     105.1     99.5   1014      985          0.3536

Description
Maroc-Tubsat is a Moroccan microsatellite that was launched by a Zenit rocket from Baikonur on Dec/10/2001. Its mission was to test a 3-dimensional attitude control system that will be incorperated in a future remote sensing mission.

Dicipline
Engineering

COBE, launched 11/18/1989
1989-088b    20321     cis      87.8      64.8   186       147          n/a

Description
The purpose of the Cosmid Background Explorer (COBE) satellite mission was to take precise measurements of the diffuse radiation over the Earth. The experiment module contained the instruments and a container filled with 650 litres of liquid helium, wich a conical sun shade. The satellite rotated at 1rpm around the axis of symmetry to control systematic errors in the anisotropy measurements, and to allow observations of the zodiacal light at various solar elongation angles. With this orbit and spin-axis orientation, the instruments performed a complete scan of the celestial sphere every six months. Instrument operations were terminated in 1993, and the satellite has been converted into a test satellite.

Dicipline
Astronomy