Monday, April 24, 2000

TOMS-EP

 1996-037A


The TOMS-Earth Probe, TOMS-EP94, carried a single experiment, Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer Flight Model 3. TOMS FM1 had flown on Nimbus 7, and FM2 flew on a 1991 Meteor satellite. TOMS-EP, originally Earth Probe '93, had been intended for launch in 1993 to take over from TOMS FM2, which eventually failed in 1994. The problems with the Pegasus launch vehicle delayed it to 1996, placing it close to the planned launch of FM4 on Japan's ADEOS. Its mission was altered to lower the target orbit from the original 900 km to 500 km for higher resolution studies.

The TOMS instrument was derived from the older SBUV first flown on Nimbus 4 in 1970. Mission operations from GSFC.

In Jul 1996 it was finally launched on the fourth Pegasus XL, carried aloft by the L-1011 carrier plane from Vandenberg. The three stage Pegasus delivered it to an elliptical polar orbit.

A monopropellant hydrazine propulsion engine delivered TOMS-EP to its final circular orbit. TOMS used TRW's STEP/Eagle class T-200 Lightsat bus, based on Defense Systems (DSI) technology. Launch mass of TOMS-EP was 295 kg including 73 kg of propellant. The satellite is 1.8m long x 1.1m wide; with solar arrays deployed 2.4 x 3.9m.


TOMS-EP94 
 

DateTimeEventOrbit  

1996 Jul 2   L-1011 takeoff from Vandenberg 
 0748  T-0:05 Pegasus drop at 38kft, launch  
  T+0:00, D+0:05 Stage 1 burn 
  T+1:15 Stage 1 burnout 
  T+1:32 Stage 1 sep, stage 2 burn 
  D+2:27 Fairing  
 0750 D+2:41 Stage 2 burnout 
 0753 D+5:58 Pegasus stage 3 burn 
 0754? Stage 3 burnout 
 0756  D+8:07? Pegasus stage 3 sep  345 x 953 x 97.4 (OSC) 
1996 Jul 3    340 x 943 x 97.4 
1996 Jul 5    97.56 340 x 943 x 97.4 
1996 Jul 8   Orbit raise 
1996 Jul 11    94.67 494 x 511 x 97.4 
1996 Jul 25    94.66 494 x 510 x 97.4 
1996 Aug 23    94.67 492 x 512 x 97.4 
1997 Mar 15    94.61 489 x 509 x 97.4 
1997 Dec 4    94.51 486 x 503 x 97.4 
1997 Dec 6   orbit raise  94.96 498 x 535 x 97.57 
1997 Dec 7   orbit raise  95.51 497 x 588 x 97.87 
1997 Dec 8   Orbit raise to replace ADEOS  96.47 582 x 596 x 97.9 
1997 Dec 15   orbit raise  99.65 737 x 746 x 98.4 
1998 Jan 28    99.65 737 x 746 x 98.4 

No comments:

Post a Comment

May 13,2026

  https://planet4589.org/space/jsr/back/news.855.txt