Tuesday, December 21, 1993

Landsat 6

 1993-F04


Landsat 6 was developed by General Electric for Eosat Co. and was intended to use the Eosat ground station in Norman, Oklahoma. The launch vehicle was a Titan II (23G) with a Thiokol Star 37FXP apogee motor. Landsat 6 was originally to use the large GE Omnistar but the project was descoped to use a Tiros N derivative. By the time of launch GE had been taken over by Martin Marietta.

The Titan II lifted off Space Launch Complex 4-West at Vandenberg AFB at 1756:29 on 1993 Oct 5. Titan stage 1 separation was at 1759:01 followed by stage 2 ignition a second later. The fairing was jettisoned at 1800:13 and stage 2 cutoff came at 1801:58, separating at 1802:01 with the Landsat/Star 37 combination on a suborbital trajectory at an altitude of 724 km. The Star 37FXP was meant to fire at 1810 to insert the payload in a 705 x 705 km orbit at an inclination of 98.2 deg. However, during the solid motor burn, the payload's attitude control system failed when its hydrazine fuel tank ruptured.


Landsat 6 
 

DateTimeEventOrbit  

1993 Oct 5  1756:29  Launch  V SLC4W 
 1759:01  Stage 1 sep 
 1759:02  Stage 2 burn 
 1800:13  Fairing 
 1801:58  Stage 2 MECO 
 1802:01  Stage 2 sep 500 km?  
 1810  SRM burn (66s) over equator 
   -2300? x 705 x 98.7  
 1822?  Reentry over 140W 42S? 

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