USA-221, also known as FalconSat-5, is an American military

minisatellite A minisatellite is a tract of repetitive DNA in which certain DNA motifs (ranging in length from 10–60 base pairs) are typically repeated 5-50 times. Minisatellites occur at more than 1,000 locations in the human genome and they are notable for ...

, which was launched in 2010. The fifth

FalconSat FalconSAT is the United States Air Force Academy's (USAFA) small satellite engineering program. Satellites are designed, built, tested, and operated by Academy cadets. The project is administered by the USAFA Space Systems Research Center under ...

spacecraft to be launched, it carries four technology development 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 experiments. The satellite was constructed and is operated by the

United States Air Force Academy The United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) is a United States service academy in El Paso County, Colorado, immediately north of Colorado Springs. It educates cadets for service in the officer corps of the United States Air Force and Uni ...

Spacecraft

USA-221 is a spacecraft, measuring by by . It operates in a

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 mor ...

with an

apogee An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. For example, the apsides of the Earth are called the aphelion and perihelion. General description There are two apsides in any ellip ...

of , a

perigee An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. For example, the apsides of the Earth are called the aphelion and perihelion. General description There are two apsides in any ellip ...

of , and 72 degrees of

orbital inclination Orbital inclination measures the tilt of an object's orbit around a celestial body. It is expressed as the angle between a reference plane and the orbital plane or axis of direction of the orbiting object. For a satellite orbiting the Earth ...

. The Space Plasma Characterization Source (SPCS) studies how a cold gas ammonia thruster and a

Hall effect thruster In spacecraft propulsion, a Hall-effect thruster (HET) is a type of ion thruster in which the propellant is accelerated by an electric field. Hall-effect thrusters (based on the discovery by Edwin Hall) are sometimes referred to as Hall thruster ...

behave in space, and how they affect the spacecraft's surroundings. Meanwhile, the Wafer-Integrated Spectrometer, WISPERS, will observe the plume generated by the Hall thruster, allowing a comparison to be made to theoretical data. The other two experiments will study the Earth's ionosphere. SmartMESA, the Smart Miniaturized Electrostatic Analyzer, was designed to record the ion density of the ionosphere, as well as the temperature, to allow a study of how temperature affects ion density. It is a reflight of the original SmartMESA mission, which was lost when FalconSat-2 failed to achieve orbit. The Receiver UHF/VHF Signal Strength, or RUSS, experiment, is intended to receive radio signals in the UHF and VHF bands, to determine the levels and effects of ionospheric interference. SmartMESA, also known as the Integrated Miniaturized ElectroStatic Analyzer, and WISPERS were respectively ranked as the 26th and 31st most important experiments for DoD satellites in 2006, by the US

Space Experiments Review Board Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider ...

Launch

USA-221 was launched from Pad 1 of the Kodiak Launch Complex, using a

Minotaur IV Minotaur IV, also known as Peacekeeper SLV and OSP-2 PK is an active expendable launch system derived from the LGM-118 Peacekeeper ICBM. It is operated by Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems, and made its maiden flight on 22 April 2010, carrying ...

carrier rocket with a

HAPS Haps is a village in the Dutch province of North Brabant. It is located in the former municipality of Cuijk, about south of the town of Cuijk. Since 2022 it has been part of the new municipality of Land van Cuijk. History The village was firs ...

upper stage; however USA-221 was deployed prior to ignition of the HAPS stage. The Minotaur was launched at 01:25:00 UTC on 20 November 2010, with FalconSat-5 separating into its low Earth orbit just over 25 minutes later. The launch also carried STPSat-2,

FASTSAT Fast, Affordable, Science and Technology Satellite-Huntsville 01 or FASTSAT-Huntsville 01 of the NASA. FASTSAT-HSV 01 was flying on the STP-S26 mission - a joint activity between NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense Space Test Program, or Do ...

and

NanoSail-D2 NanoSail-D2 was a small satellite built by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and Ames Research Center to study the deployment of a solar sail in space. It was a three-unit CubeSat, measuring with a mass of . Its solar sail had an area of , a ...

FASTRAC Formation Autonomy Spacecraft with Thrust, Relnav, Attitude and Crosslink (or FASTRAC) is a pair of nanosatellites (respectively named ''Sara-Lily'' and ''Emma'') developed and built by students at The University of Texas at Austin. The project ...

O/OREOS The O/OREOS (Organism/Organic Exposure to Orbital Stresses) is an NASA automated CubeSat nanosatellite laboratory approximately the size of a loaf of bread that contains two separate astrobiology experiments on board. Developed by the Small Sp ...

, and RAX. Collectively, the deployment mission was designated STP-S26, and marked the third flight of the Minotaur IV.

References

External links

Busek (Natick, MA USA)- Propulsion System Vendor
{{Orbital launches in 2010 Spacecraft launched in 2010 USA satellites