Saturday, February 14, 2015

SOHO

 1995-065A


The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory was launched on 1995 Dec 2. The satellite was built by Matra Marconi Space for ESA, which managed the SOHO project in collaboration with NASA. It is 3.65m long, 3.65m wide and has a mass of 1864 kg (ESA web page) or 1875 kg (AWST). SOHO, together with CLUSTER, formed part of the Cornerstone 1 (CS1) mission, the first element of the Horizon 2000 program to be launched.

SOHO was the second L1 mission and entered a counterclockwise (Class 2) halo orbit of radius 600000 km around the Earth-Sun L1 point 1.5 Mkm from the Earth. (ISEE had used a clockwise, Class 1, orbit).

In Jun 1998, SOHO went out of control during a momentum management maneuver. Errors in commanding the satellite meant that the emergency sun re-acquisition procedure failed and contact was lost. Goldstone radar detected the spacecraft a few weeks later, and intermittent contact was restored on Aug 4.

145 kg of fuel remained in mid-1999; original loading was 240 kg meaning the dry mass is 1624 kg. A later report gave 1863 kg full with 251 kg prop.


SOHO 
 

DateTimeEventOrbit  

1995 Dec 2  0808:01  Launch by Atlas IIAS Centaur (AC-121)  CC LC36B 
 0808:01  Atlas and first pair SRB on 
 0808:57  First pair SRB burnout 
 0808:59  Second pair SRB on 
 0809:09  First pair sep 
 0809:56  Second pair burnout and sep 
 0810:43  BECO 
 0810:47  Booster jettison 
 0811:33  Fairing sep 
 0813:07  SECO 
 0813:09  Atlas sep 
 0813:26  Centaur MES1 
 0817:49  Centaur MECO1  175 x 183 x 28.8 
 0932:44  Centaur MES1, 1:57 over E Pac. 
 0934:42  Centaur MECO1 
 1009:42  Centaur sep  177 x 1115746 x 29.72 
  Centaur sep burn 
 1030s  Centaur blowdown   
 2310  Pass EL1:4  174 x 1110172 x 29.72  
1995 Dec 3  2300s TCM-1, 243000 km range 
1995 Dec 15   1 Mkm range  3500 x 1290200 x 29.2 
1995 Dec 22  TCM-2  9180 x 1345592 x 29.5 
1995 Dec 23  0750  GSEx above 1.2Mkm, L1 region 
1996 Feb 14  1700 Halo orbit insertion  238000 x 666672 x 54.4 
1996 May 23   SK-1 0.3k/s 
1996 Aug 1    290000 x 1568000 x 22.7 
1996 Sep 1    881024 x 1326562 x 23.9 
1996 Sep 11   SK-02 0.5m/s 
1997 Jan 14   SK-03 0.04m/s 
1997 Apr 11   SK-04 0.19 m/s 
1997 Sep 4   SK-05 1.9m/s 
1997 Nov 29   SK-06 0.04m/s 
1997 Dec 19   SK-07 0.40m/s 
1998 Apr 17   SK-08 1.4m/s 
1998 Jun 24   Momentum management mvr 
  Safemode 
 2100  Emergency sun re-acq 
 2330 Safemode 
  Emergency sun re-acq 
1998 Jun 25  0340  Safemode, contact lost 
  Net dV 1.42 cm/s 
1998 Jul   Contact by Arecibo 
1998 Aug 3   DSN contact, Recover control 
1998 Sep 16   Operations resume 
1998 Sep 25   RM-01 6.2m/s 
1998 Oct 16   RM-02 1.9m/s 
1998 Nov 13   RM-03 2.3m/s 
1998 Dec 21   Safemode, gyro failed 
1999 Jan   Observations resume 
1999 Jan 7   RM-04 8.1m/s 
1999 Jan 10   RM-05 8.6m/s 
1999 Jan 26   RM-06 4.0m/s 
1999 Feb 1   RM-07 0.3m/s 
1999 Feb 14   Safemode again 
1999 Feb 18   Out of safemode 
1999 Mar 5   RM-08 0.1m/s 
1999 Jun 17   SK-09 0.5m/s 
2013 Jan   UVCS retired 

Payload:

  • Service module with hydrazine thrusters

  • CDS (Coronal Diagnostic Spectrometer) o CDS from Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, United Kingdom. Effective geometric diameter about 20 cm?; Wolter II telescope 150-800A
  • CELIAS (Charge, Element, and Isotope Analysis System) o CELIAS from the University of  Bern, in Switzerland.
  • COSTEP (Comprehensive Suprathermal and Energetic Particle Analyzer) o COSTEP from the University of Kiel, Germany (in German).
  • EIT (Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope) o EIT from the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, USA. 12 cm tel.
  • ERNE (Energetic and Relativistic Nuclei and Electron experiment) o ERNE from the University of Turku, in Finland.
  • GOLF (Global Oscillations at Low Frequencies) o GOLF from the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale, France.
  • LASCO (Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph) o LASCO from the Naval Research Laboratory, USA. o LASCO from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany.
  • MDI/SOI (Michelson Doppler Imager/Solar Oscillations Investigation) o MDI/SOI from Stanford University, USA.
  • SUMER (Solar Ultraviolet Measurements of Emitted Radiation) o SUMER from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany. ; 13 cm telescope-spectrograph
  • UVCS (Ultraviolet Coronagraph Spectrometer) o UVCS from Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, USA. 7 cm mirror in spectrograph

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