Wednesday, October 16, 1991

OSO 2

  1965-007A


The S-017 payload, OSO B, was damaged in an accident on 1964 Apr 14 when the Altair X-248A6 third stage ignited during a ground test and the vehicle launched itself to the building ceiling. Unlike the later X-258, the X-248 igniter was sensitive to electrostatic potentials generated by normal activity in the clean room. There were three fatalities.

Parts from OSO B were combined with an engineering prototype to create OSO B2, which was launched at 1636 on 1965 Feb 3 by a Delta C from Cape Canaveral. 12 minutes later, Orbiting Solar Observatory 2 was in a 96.40 min, 550 x 634 km x 32.9 deg orbit. It transmitted regularly until 1965 Nov and was used occasionally until mid 1966.


OSO 2 
 

DateTimeEventOrbit  

1965 Feb 3  1636:00  Launch by Delta 29 CK LC17B 
 1638:26 T+2:26 MECO 
  Thor 411 sep 
 1638  Delta S/N 20110 burn, 2:26 
 1639:03  T+3:03 Fairing  
 1641  Delta SECO 
  T+11:22 spinup 
 1647:24 T+11:24 St 2 sep 
 1647:28 T+11:28 Altair burn 23s 
 1647:50 T+11:50 Altair burnout 
  T+12:52 Arms deployed
 1649:28 T+13:28 Altair sep 96.40 550 x 634 x 32.9 
1965 Nov 6   Gas depleted, end of main mission; turned off 
1966 Jun 1   Reactivate for end-of-life tests 
1966 Jun 6   End of operations 
1989 Aug 9   Reentered 146 x 148 x 32.8 

Payload:

  • Sail:

  • Solar UV spectrometer 300-1400A, HCO

  • Solar X monitor 2-20A,44-60A (0.6-6 keV,0.2-0.28 keV), NRL

  • UV telescope, NRL (1216, 388 and 304 A).

  • White light coronagraph, NRL

  • Wheel:

  • Zodiacal light photometers 4750-8000A, Minnesota

  • Low energy Gamma-ray detector 0.1-0.7 MeV, GSFC

  • High energy Gamma ray solar and extrasolar: 0.1-1 GeV, New Mexico

  • Astronomical UV spectrophotometer, 900-2000 and 1800-3800A, GSFC

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...