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The Alouette Satellite: A great Canadian achievement.

OTHER NAMES:

Alouette-A 00424

LAUNCH DATE/TIME:

1962-09-29 at 06:05:00 UTC

ON-ORBIT DRY MASS:

145.70 kg

DISCIPLINES:

Astronomy; Solar Physics; Space Physics

DESCRIPTION:

Alouette 1 was a small ionospheric observatory instrumented with an ionospheric sounder, a VLF receiver, an energetic particle detector, and a cosmic noise experiment. Extended from the satellite shell were two dipole antennas (45.7- and 22.8-m long, respectively) which were shared by three of the experiments on the spacecraft. The satellite was spin-stabilized at about 1.4 rpm after antenna extension. After about 500 days, the spin slowed more than had been expected, to about 0.6 rpm when satellite spin-stabilization failed. It is believed that the satellite gradually progressed toward a gravity gradient stabilization with the longer antenna pointing earthward. Attitude information was deduced only from a single magnetometer and temperature measurements on the upper and lower heat shields. (Attitude determination could have been in error by as much as 10 deg.) There was no tape recorder, so data were available only from the vicinity of telemetry stations. Telemetry stations were located to provide primary data coverage near the 80 deg W meridian and in areas near Hawaii, Singapore, Australia, Europe, and Central Africa. Initially, data were recorded for about 6 h per day. In September 1972, spacecraft operations were terminated.

Reprinted courtesy of the National Space Science Data Center