Discoverer 22, also known as Corona 9015, was an American optical
reconnaissance satellite which was lost in a launch failure in 1961. It was the fourth of ten
Corona KH-2 satellites, based on the
Agena-B.
The launch of Discoverer 22 occurred at 20:34:43 UTC on 30 March 1961. A
Thor DM-21 Agena-B rocket was used, flying from
launch pad 75-3-4 at the
Vandenberg Air Force Base Vandenberg may refer to:
* Vandenberg (surname), including a list of people with the name
* USNS ''General Hoyt S. Vandenberg'' (T-AGM-10), transport ship in the United States Navy, sank as an artificial reef in Key West, Florida
* Vandenberg Sp ...
.
Due to a malfunction of the rocket's second stage, it failed to achieve orbit.
Discoverer 22 was to have operated 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 ...
. It had a mass of ,
and was equipped with a
panoramic camera
Panoramic photography is a technique of photography, using specialized equipment or software, that captures images with horizontally elongated fields of view. It is sometimes known as ''wide format photography''. The term has also been applied to ...
with a
focal length of , which had a maximum resolution of .
Images were to have been recorded onto film, and returned in a
Satellite Recovery Vehicle. The Satellite Recovery Vehicle carried aboard Discoverer 22 was SRV-509.
References
Spacecraft launched in 1961
Satellite launch failures
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