UoSAT-4, also known as UO-15 and OSCAR-15, is a British satellite in

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 ...

. It was built by a spin-off company of the

University of Surrey The University of Surrey is a public research university in Guildford, Surrey, England. The university received its royal charter in 1966, along with a number of other institutions following recommendations in the Robbins Report. The institut ...

Surrey Satellite Technology Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, or SSTL, is a company involved in the manufacture and operation of small satellites. A spin-off company of the University of Surrey, it is presently wholly owned by Airbus Defence and Space. The company began ...

(SSTL) and launched in January 1990 from

French Guiana French Guiana ( or ; french: link=no, Guyane ; gcr, label=French Guianese Creole, Lagwiyann ) is an overseas departments and regions of France, overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France on the northern Atlantic ...

. UoSAT-4 was launched on the same rocket as its sister satellite, UoSAT-3.

Mission

UoSAT-4 carried equipment to supplement UoSAT-3, but failed after two days in orbit. The satellite forms part of the growing amounts of

orbital debris Space debris (also known as space junk, space pollution, space waste, space trash, or space garbage) are defunct human-made objects in space—principally in Earth orbit—which no longer serve a useful function. These include derelict spacecr ...

orbiting around the Earth. The payload will decay in the Earth's atmosphere some time in the future.

References

University of Surrey Satellites orbiting Earth Amateur radio satellites Satellites of the United Kingdom Spacecraft launched in 1990 {{UK-spacecraft-stub