Challenging Minisatellite Payload (CHAMP) was a German

satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioisotope ...

launched July 15, 2000 from

Plesetsk Plesetsk (russian: Плесе́цк) is an urban locality (a work settlement) and the administrative center of Plesetsky District, Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia, situated about northeast of Moscow and south of Arkhangelsk. Municipally, it is t ...

, Russia and was used for

atmospheric An atmosphere () is a layer of gas or layers of gases that envelop a planet, and is held in place by the gravity of the planetary body. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A s ...

and

ionospheric The ionosphere () is the ionized part of the upper atmosphere of Earth, from about to above sea level, a region that includes the thermosphere and parts of the mesosphere and exosphere. The ionosphere is ionized by solar radiation. It plays a ...

research, as well as other geoscientific applications, such as

GPS radio occultation Radio occultation (RO) is a remote sensing technique used for measuring the physical properties of a planetary atmosphere or ring system. Atmospheric radio occultation Atmospheric radio occultation relies on the detection of a change in a radio ...

, gravity field determination, and studying the Earth's magnetic field. CHAMP was managed by GeoForschungsZentrum (GFZ)

Potsdam Potsdam () is the capital and, with around 183,000 inhabitants, largest city of the German state of Brandenburg. It is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. Potsdam sits on the River Havel, a tributary of the Elbe, downstream of B ...

. The spacecraft is the first application of Astrium's "Flexbus" platform;

GRACE Grace may refer to: Places United States * Grace, Idaho, a city * Grace (CTA station), Chicago Transit Authority's Howard Line, Illinois * Little Goose Creek (Kentucky), location of Grace post office * Grace, Carroll County, Missouri, an uninco ...

was the second. A heavily modified version flew as the

GOCE ''Goce'' is an opera composed by Kiril Makedonski (1925–1984), written by Venko Markovski and dedicated to Gotse Delchev. The work was commissioned to be the very first opera performed by the Macedonian National Opera Company. It premiered o ...

mission.

Spacecraft Instruments

An onboard BlackJack

Global Positioning System The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of the global navigation satellite sy ...

(GPS) Flight Receiver, provided by JPL, enables the use of satellite to satellite tracking for vehicle positioning. To remove the effect of external, non-gravitational forces (e.g.,

atmospheric drag In fluid dynamics, drag (sometimes called air resistance, a type of friction, or fluid resistance, another type of friction or fluid friction) is a force acting opposite to the relative motion of any object moving with respect to a surrounding flu ...

solar radiation pressure Radiation pressure is the mechanical pressure exerted upon any surface due to the exchange of momentum between the object and the electromagnetic field. This includes the momentum of light or electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength that is a ...

) the satellite features an internal 3-axis STAR accelerometer. Independent verification of orbital position is enabled by a passive Laser Retro Reflector (LRR), which also enables calibration of the principal positioning via laser ranging. Spacecraft attitude is measured using Advanced Stellar Compass (ASC) supplied by

Technical University of Denmark The Technical University of Denmark ( da, Danmarks Tekniske Universitet), often simply referred to as DTU, is a polytechnic university and school of engineering. It was founded in 1829 at the initiative of Hans Christian Ørsted as Denmark's fi ...

. Mounted on the boom, the satellite has an Magnetometer Instrument Assembly System (MIAS) for measurement of the Earth's magnetic field. The vehicle can measure the Earth's electric field parallel to the magnetic field with the Digital Ion Drift Meter (DIDM).

End of mission

CHAMP completed its mission and re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on 19 September 2010 after 10 years (design life: five years). The mission was judged as being successful by the involved scientists, in particular as the original 5 year design life was significantly extended.

References

External links

Official site
Spacecraft launched in 2000 Satellites of Germany Spacecraft which reentered in 2010 Laser ranging satellites Atmospheric sounding satellites Geospace monitoring satellites Gravimetry satellites {{Germany-spacecraft-stub