Sunday, January 23, 1994

Explorer 7

  1959-009


The S-001A satellite was developed by ABMA and JPL, and transferred to NASA when the agency was formed. It was launched on 1959 Oct 13 at 1530 by a Juno II (Round AM-16A/19A with JPL Cluster 13) from Cape Canaveral into a 101 min, 556 x 1088 km x 50 deg orbit. S-1A, renamed Explorer VII, transmitted until 1961 Feb 17. 

The AM-19A launch vehicle was damaged on 1959 Sep 16 when Jupiter AM-23 was destroyed after launch from a nearby pad, but repairs took only two weeks. The Assembly 3 and 4 stages were upgraded structurally to support the heavier payload.

S-1A was a double cone with a short equatorial cylinder. The Van Allen cosmic ray detector was mounted at the top, with the X-ray and Lyman alpha detectors on the upper cone and the heavy nuclei chamber along the central axis. The micrometeorite and heat balance experiments were on the outside of the cylinder. Four 3.6m antennae were deployed around the satellite's ‘equator’.


Explorer 7
 

DateTimeEventOrbit  

1959 Oct 13  1530:04  Launch by Juno II  CC 
  Ascent on azimuth 44.0 deg 
  T+2:58 MECO 
  T+3:05 Jupiter sep 
  T+3:34 Fairing sep 
 1539:07  Assembly 2 ignition (T+9:02) at 557 km  
 1539:07  Cover assembly sep 
  T+9:11 Assembly 3 burn   
  T+9:20 Assembly 4 burn  -2132? x 561 x 50.3 
 1539:33 T+9:29 Payload sep 
 1540? Antenna extension 20MHz 
1959 Oct 17    101.40 560 x 1089 x 50.27 
1961 Feb 17   End of ops  

No comments:

Post a Comment

These Are Not My Beautiful Stories

  Summary: The chapters within are outlines for both future stories I’ve got planned (in the case that I never get around to writing them) a...