Meteor-1-1 was the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

's first fully operational weather satellite, and was launched 26 March 1969 on a

Vostok rocket Vostok (Russian: Восток, translated as "East") was a family of rockets derived from the Soviet R-7 Semyorka ICBM and was designed for the human spaceflight programme. This family of rockets launched the first artificial satellite ( Spu ...

. It weighed between 1,200 and 1,400 kilograms, and was originally placed in orbit at an altitude of 650 km. Two solar panels were automatically oriented toward the Sun. It ceased operations in July 1970.Soviet Weather Satellite Falls in Antarctica
RIA Novosti, 27 March 2012, accessed 28 March 2012 Meteor-1-1 was the first of a series of 25 launches of similar spacecraft (model designation Meteor M 11F614) from 1969 to 1977.Meteor M 11F614

Encyclopedia Astronautica The ''Encyclopedia Astronautica'' is a reference web site on space travel. A comprehensive catalog of vehicles, technology, astronauts, and flights, it includes information from most countries that have had an active rocket research program, f ...

, accessed 17 September 2013 The satellite provided near-global observations of the Earth's weather systems, cloud cover, ice and snow fields, and reflected and emitted radiation from the dayside and nightside of the Earth-atmosphere system for operational use by the Soviet meteorological service. Some of the processed data and TV pictures from the satellite were distributed to meteorological centers on the world. Meteor-1-1

deorbit Atmospheric entry is the movement of an object from outer space into and through the gases of an atmosphere of a planet, dwarf planet, or natural satellite. There are two main types of atmospheric entry: ''uncontrolled entry'', such as the entr ...

ed and fell in

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...

on 26 March 2012, on the anniversary of its launch 43 years earlier, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. "According to data provided by the Main Center for Space Reconnaissance, which is part of Russia's Space Forces, fragments of the Meteor-1-1 satellite entered the Earth's atmosphere at 02:17 a.m. Moscow time on Tuesday (22:17 GMT Monday 26 March 2012)," according to Space Forces spokesman Col. Alexey Zolotukhin. He also said that the defunct satellite fell in the

Queen Maud Land Queen Maud Land ( no, Dronning Maud Land) is a roughly region of Antarctica claimed by Norway as a dependent territory. It borders the claimed British Antarctic Territory 20° west and the Australian Antarctic Territory 45° east. In addit ...

region of Antarctica, about 690 kilometres (430 miles) from

Argentinean Argentines (mistakenly translated Argentineans in the past; in Spanish language, Spanish (Grammatical gender, masculine) or (Grammatical gender, feminine)) are people identified with the country of Argentina. This connection may be resident ...

research station of Belgrano II.

References

External links

Sputnik server

eoPortal Meteor overview
{{Orbital launches in 1969 Weather satellites of the Soviet Union Weather satellites of Russia 1969 in the Soviet Union Spacecraft launched in 1969

See also

References

External links