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Mercury-Scout 1
Mercury-Scout 1, or MS-1, was a United States spacecraft intended to test tracking stations for Project Mercury flights. It grew out of a May 5, 1961 NASA proposal to use Scout rockets to launch small satellites to evaluate the worldwide Mercury Tracking Network in preparation for manned orbital missions. The launch of Mercury-Scout 1 on November 1, 1961 was unsuccessful, and the satellite failed to reach orbit. Background The Mercury Tracking Network was a series of U.S. owned and operated ground stations and tracking ships, positioned around the world under the flightpath of Mercury spacecraft. When the spacecraft came within several hundred miles of a ground station, it could have line-of-sight voice and telemetry communications by HF (shortwave), VHF or UHF radio and C-band and S-band radar. These communications passes would only last a few minutes, until the ground station disappeared over the horizon. Between ground stations, Mercury spacecraft were out of communications ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), to give the U.S. space development effort a distinctly civilian orientation, emphasizing peaceful applications in space science. NASA has since led most American space exploration, including Project Mercury, Project Gemini, the 1968-1972 Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station, and the Space Shuttle. NASA supports the International Space Station and oversees the development of the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System for the crewed lunar Artemis program, Commercial Crew spacecraft, and the planned Lunar Gateway space station. The agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program, which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RM-90 Blue Scout II
The RM-90 Blue Scout II was an American sounding rocket and expendable launch system which was flown three times during 1961. It was used for two HETS test flights, and the launch of the Mercury-Scout 1 satellite for NASA. It was a member of the Scout family of rockets. The Blue Scout II was a military version of the NASA-operated Scout X-1. Launches All three launches occurred from Launch Complex 18B at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the same launch pad used for the Blue Scout I. The first two launches were successfully conducted on 3 March and 12 April 1961 respectively, using vehicles D-4 and D-5. They both carried HETS A2 plasma research experiments on suborbital trajectories. The third launch was conducted on 1 November, using vehicle D-8, with the Mercury-Scout 1 satellite for NASA, which was intended to reach low Earth orbit. The launch failed after the rocket went out of control, and was destroyed by the range safety officer In the field of rocket ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) is an installation of the United States Space Force's Space Launch Delta 45, located on Cape Canaveral in Brevard County, Florida. Headquartered at the nearby Patrick Space Force Base, the station is the primary launch site for the Space Force's Eastern RangeCAST 1999, p. 1-12. with three launch pads currently active (Space Launch Complexes 37B, 40, and 41). The facility is south-southeast of NASA's Kennedy Space Center on adjacent Merritt Island, with the two linked by bridges and causeways. The Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Skid Strip provides a runway close to the launch complexes for military airlift aircraft delivering heavy and outsized payloads to the Cape. A number of American space exploration pioneers were launched from CCSFS, including the first U.S. Earth satellite (1958), first U.S. astronaut (1961), first U.S. astronaut in orbit (1962), first two-man U.S. spacecraft (1965), first U.S. unmanned lunar lan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 18
Launch Complex 18 (LC-18) is a launch complex at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida that was active during the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was used by Viking, Vanguard, Thor and Scout rockets. The complex consists of two launch pads, LC-18A, which was originally built by the US Navy for the Vanguard rocket, and LC-18B, which was originally by the US Air Force used for tests of the PGM-17 Thor missile. The first launch from LC-18 was a Viking rocket from LC-18A on 8 December 1956, on a test flight for Project Vanguard. A further Viking launch was conducted in May 1957, and the Vanguard made its maiden flight from the complex in September. Following this, the United States first satellite launch attempt was made from LC-18A, using Vanguard TV3, on 6 December 1957. The launch failed after the rocket lost thrust and exploded on the launch pad. All twelve Vanguard launches were conducted from LC-18A, with the complex being transferred to NASA after it took over responsi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geocentric Orbit
A geocentric orbit or Earth orbit involves any object orbiting Earth, such as the Moon or artificial satellites. In 1997, NASA estimated there were approximately 2,465 artificial satellite payloads orbiting Earth and 6,216 pieces of space debris as tracked by the Goddard Space Flight Center. More than 16,291 objects previously launched have undergone orbital decay and entered Earth's atmosphere. A spacecraft enters orbit when its centripetal acceleration due to gravity is less than or equal to the centrifugal acceleration due to the horizontal component of its velocity. For a low Earth orbit, this velocity is about ; by contrast, the fastest crewed airplane speed ever achieved (excluding speeds achieved by deorbiting spacecraft) was in 1967 by the North American X-15. The energy required to reach Earth orbital velocity at an altitude of is about 36 MJ/kg, which is six times the energy needed merely to climb to the corresponding altitude. Spacecraft with a perigee belo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Low Earth Orbit
A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never more than about one-third of the radius of Earth. The term ''LEO region'' is also used for the area of space below an altitude of (about one-third of Earth's radius). Objects in orbits that pass through this zone, even if they have an apogee further out or are sub-orbital, are carefully tracked since they present a collision risk to the many LEO satellites. All crewed space stations to date have been within LEO. From 1968 to 1972, the Apollo program's lunar missions sent humans beyond LEO. Since the end of the Apollo program, no human spaceflights have been beyond LEO. Defining characteristics A wide variety of sources define LEO in terms of altitude. The altitude of an object in an elliptic orbit can vary significantly along the orbit. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mercury-Atlas 4
Mercury-Atlas 4 was an uncrewed spaceflight of the Mercury program. It was launched on September 13, 1961, at 14:09 UTC from Launch Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. A Crewman Simulator instrument package was aboard. The craft orbited the Earth once. There were a series of delays getting the Atlas and Mercury capsule ready as the postflight findings from MA-3 had necessitated extensive modifications to the booster. Vehicle 88D did not undergo its factory rollout inspection until June 30 and delivery to Cape Canaveral waited until July 15. Moreover, the flight was not going to use Mercury capsule #9 as planned, but instead capsule #8, which had been recovered from the MA3 launch and refurbished. Capsule #8 was also the last of the older models with small port windows, no landing bag, and a heavy locking mechanism on the hatch. A series of delays occurred due to problems with the Atlas autopilot, including the replacement of a defective yaw rate gyro. Launch was originally i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mercury-Atlas 5
Mercury-Atlas 5 was an American spaceflight of the Mercury program. It was launched on November 29, 1961, with Enos, a chimpanzee, aboard. The craft orbited the Earth twice and splashed down about south of Bermuda, and Enos became the first primate from the United States and the third great ape to orbit the Earth. History By November 1961, the Soviet Union had launched Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov into orbit during the Vostok 1 and Vostok 2 manned orbital flights while the United States had managed only suborbital ones. At that time NASA was still debating placing a chimpanzee in orbit as part of the Mercury-Atlas subprogram, with NASA headquarters questioning the wisdom of the Manned Spacecraft Center launching another unmanned Mercury mission. The NASA Public Affairs Office issued a press release prior to the flight, stating "The men in charge of Project Mercury have insisted on orbiting the chimpanzee as a necessary preliminary checkout of the entire Mercury program befor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Project Mercury
Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963. An early highlight of the Space Race, its goal was to put a man into Earth orbit and return him safely, ideally before the Soviet Union. Taken over from the US Air Force by the newly created civilian space agency NASA, it conducted 20 uncrewed developmental flights (some using animals), and six successful flights by astronauts. The program, which took its name from Roman mythology, cost $ (adjusted for inflation). The astronauts were collectively known as the "Mercury Seven", and each spacecraft was given a name ending with a "7" by its pilot. The Space Race began with the 1957 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1. This came as a shock to the American public, and led to the creation of NASA to expedite existing US space exploration efforts, and place most of them under civilian control. After the successful launch of the Explorer 1 satellite in 1958, crewed spacef ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scout (rocket Family)
The Scout family of rockets were American launch vehicles designed to place small satellites into orbit around the Earth. The Scout multistage rocket was the first orbital launch vehicle to be entirely composed of solid fuel stages. It was also the only vehicle of that type until the successful launch of the Japanese Lambda 4S in 1970. The original Scout (an acronym for Solid Controlled Orbital Utility Test system) was designed in 1957 at the NACA, at Langley center. Scout launch vehicles were used from 1961 until 1994. To enhance reliability the development team opted to use "off the shelf" hardware, originally produced for military programs. According to the NASA fact sheet: "... the first stage motor was a combination of the Jupiter Senior and the Navy Polaris; the second stage came from the Army MGM-29 Sergeant; and the third and fourth stage motors were designed by Langley engineers who adapted a version of the Navy Vanguard." The first successful orbital launch of a Sco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manned Space Flight Network
The Manned Space Flight Network (abbreviated MSFN, pronounced "''misfin''") was a set of tracking stations built to support the American Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab space programs. There were two other NASA space communication networks at the time, the Spacecraft Tracking and Data Acquisition Network (STADAN) for tracking satellites in low Earth orbit, and the Deep Space Network (DSN) for tracking more distant uncrewed missions. After the end of Skylab, the MSFN and STADAN were merged to form the Spaceflight Tracking and Data Network (STDN). STDN was in turn replaced by the satellite-based Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) during the Space Shuttle program, being used . Orbital versus deep space tracking Tracking vehicles in low Earth orbits (LEO) is quite different from tracking deep space missions. Deep space missions are visible for long periods of time from a large portion of the Earth's surface, and so require few stations (the DSN uses only three, ). ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Telemetry
Telemetry is the in situ data collection, collection of measurements or other data at remote points and their automatic data transmission, transmission to receiving equipment (telecommunication) for monitoring. The word is derived from the Greek language, Greek roots ''tele'', "remote", and ''metron'', "measure". Systems that need external instructions and data to operate require the counterpart of telemetry, telecommand. Although the term commonly refers to wireless data transfer mechanisms (e.g., using radio, ultrasonic, or Infrared#Communications, infrared systems), it also encompasses data transferred over other media such as a telephone or computer network, optical link or other wired communications like power line carriers. Many modern telemetry systems take advantage of the low cost and ubiquity of GSM networks by using SMS to receive and transmit telemetry data. A ''telemeter'' is a physical device used in telemetry. It consists of a sensor, a transmission path, and a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
