FTV-2203, also known as Samos 5, was an American reconnaissance satellite launched in 1961 as part of the

Samos Samos (, also ; el, Σάμος ) is a Greece, Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, south of Chios, north of Patmos and the Dodecanese, and off the coast of western Turkey, from which it is separated by the -wide Mycale Strait. It is also a se ...

programme. It was a film return reconnaissance spacecraft, meaning that it returned images in a film capsule at the end of its mission. FTV-2203 was a Samos-E5 spacecraft, based on the Agena-B. It carried a camera with a focal length of and a resolution of .

The launch

The launch of FTV-2203 occurred at 19:12:33 UTC on 22 December 1961. An Atlas LV-3A Agena-B rocket was used, flying from Launch Complex 1-2 at the

Point Arguello Point Arguello ( Spanish: ''Punta Argüello'') is a headland on the Gaviota Coast, in Santa Barbara County, California, near the city of Lompoc. The area was first used by the United States Navy in 1959 for the launch of military and soundin ...

Naval Air Station. During the launch, the first stage sustainer engine failed to shut down on time, and instead burned until all of its oxidiser had been depleted. As a result, the spacecraft reached a higher orbit than had been planned. It was assigned the Harvard designation 1961 Alpha Lambda 1. Following launch, FTV-2203 was 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 ell ...

of , a perigee of , and 89.6 degrees of inclination. Within a few days of launch, it was commanded to deorbit in order to return its film capsule. This was conducted, however due to the additional altitude provided by the anomaly during launch, it was unable to fully deorbit. The burn lowered its orbit, and it reentered the atmosphere on 31 December 1961. The film capsule, which had separated following the attempted deorbit burn, decayed on 9 January 1962. The satellite had a mass of , and measured in length, with a diameter of .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ftv-2203 Spacecraft launched in 1961 Satellite launch failures