1963-014
The 30 kg West Ford canister was ejected from the parent Midas Agena B in polar orbit on 1963 May 10. The copper needles successfully dispersed and by Jun 18 the Earth was surrounded by a belt of dipoles 16 km wide and 32 km thick. They experienced rapid atmospheric drag and most reentered around Jan 1966. However several clusters of needles which failed to separate are still being tracked.
The dipole belt was used for communications tests from ground stations at Camp Parks, Calif and Westford, MA.
The package had 20 kg of copper in 480 million hair-like fibers 1.78 cm long and 0.0018cm diameter. It was made up of 18 disks 1.78cm high, containing dipoles in napthalene. The package was divided in five sections: four groups of four disks and one group of two disks to which a telemetry package was attached. The dispenser was 0.11m in diameter and 0.36m long.
The ejection was delayed for 30 minutes because of Midas constraints, which meant that the orbiting dipole dispenser was heated unevenly by the sun instead of being irradiated normal to the dispenser surface. Because of this, only half the dipoles dispensed, the remainder breaking up into clumps which were eventually cataloged. The napthalene in the inside evaporated too soon. By about May 11 1600 UT most of the dipoles were dispensed. (It's not clear that the 30 minutes really mattered, since it was expected to take several hours to evaporate all the dipoles anyway).
Most objects cataloged from the launch had small radar cross sections between 0.05 and 0.4 sq m. The objects 1963-14U, 14AE had much larger radar cross-sections of 80-90 sq m. 1963-14DA had 22 sq.m. but is thought to be a miscataloged Pageos fragment. 14G and 14H were also fairly large:
| Large RCS objects from 1963-14 launch |
| INTL | SATCAT | ID? | RCS |
| 1963-14E | 602 | Solar array cover? | 0.23 |
| 1963-14B | 579 | TRS 5 | 0.38 |
| 1963-14EA | 19051 | West Ford cluster | 0.50 |
| 1963-14L | 2361 | West Ford cluster | 0.50 |
| 1963-14F | 628 | Solar array cover? | 0.53 |
| 1963-14P | 2364 | West Ford cluster | 0.63 |
| 1963-14EQ | 19859 | West Ford cluster | 0.63 |
| 1963-14C | 608 | TRS 6 | 0.74 |
| 1963-14H | 702 | West Ford package section | 0.93 |
| 1963-14D | 589 | DASH 1 | 1.1 |
| 1963-14G | 629 | West Ford telemetry section? | 1.2 |
| 1963-14AH | 2522 | West Ford cluster | 2.5 |
| 1963-14A | 574 | Midas 7/Agena | 4.7 |
| 1963-14DA | 5994 | Pageos fragment? | 22.2 |
| 1963-14AE | 2497 | West Ford cluster | 80.0 |
| 1963-14U | 2373 | West Ford cluster | 90.8 |
The cross section of the torus was 15 to 30 km; the mean distance between dipoles was 400 meters. They were designed to resonate at 8 GHz.
In May to July CW (PCM) voice comm experiments were conducted at 20 kbit/s; later, teletype messages were transmitted at the lower bandwidth of 100 bit/s available when the belt density declined. Measurements indicated around 120 million dipoles.
Dispenser time: An illustration shows the ejection approximately over Hawaii, following a desired ejection point over the N Pole. Shapiro gives 1756 UTC, which puts the satellite at 28N 90W, essentially over the Gulf of Mexico. Two orbits later, the 2357 UTC release time is over the Pacific but to the south of the equator; a Hawaii ejection would have been at 2335 UTC.
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| West Ford |
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| Date | Time | Event | Orbit |
|---|
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| 1963 May 9 | 2006:16 | Launch by Atlas Agena B | PA LC1 Pad 2 |
| | 2008:35 | BECO (T+2:19) |
| | 2010:44 | SECO (T+4:28) |
| | 2011:01 | VECO (T+4:45) |
| | 2011:03 | Atlas sep (T+4:47) |
| | 2012:04 | Agena burn (T+5:48) |
| | 2015:45 | Agena MECO (T+9:29) | ? x 3700 x 87.3 |
| | 2115? | Agena burn 2 (20s) |
| | | Agena MECO | 166.5 3593 x 3706 x 87.27 (VCR) |
| |
| 1963 May 10 | 1756:24 | Ejected |
| 1963 May 11 | 1600? | Dispensing complete |
| 1963 May 15 | | belt 7500 km long |
| 1963 Jun 18 | | Dipole belt closed |
| 1963 Aug 7 | | | 3391 x 3929 x 86 |
| 1964 Jan 29 | | | 2760 x 4497 x 86 |
