A DemoSat is a boilerplate spacecraft used to test a

carrier rocket A launch vehicle or carrier rocket is a rocket designed to carry a payload (spacecraft or satellites) from the Earth's surface to outer space. Most launch vehicles operate from a launch pads, supported by a launch control center and syste ...

without risking a real satellite on the launch. They are most commonly flown on the maiden flights of rockets, but have also been flown on return-to-flight missions after launch failures. Defunct satellites from cancelled programmes may be flown as DemoSats, for example the maiden flight of the

Soyuz-2 Soyuz-2 ( GRAU index 14A14) is a modernized version of the Soviet Soyuz rocket. In its basic form, it is a three-stage launch vehicle for placing payloads into low Earth orbit. Compared to the previous versions of the Soyuz, the first-stage ...

rocket placed an obsolete Zenit-8 satellite onto a

sub-orbital A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the atmosphere or surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched, so that it will not complete one orbital re ...

trajectory in order to test the rocket's performance.Soyuz-ST - Encyclopedia Astronautica

References

Satellites by type + {{spacecraft-stub

See also

References