SOLRAD 2 was the second in the SOLRAD program developed by the U.S. Navy’s Naval Research Laboratory. It was launched along with Transit 3A atop a Thor DM-21 Ablestar rocket on November 30, 1960. Both satellites failed to reach orbit when the booster flew off course and was destroyed, raining debris over Cuba.
About SOLRAD 2 in brief
SOLRAD 2 was the second in the SOLRAD program developed by the United States Navy’s Naval Research Laboratory. The mission of the satellite was to map the Soviet Union’s air defense radar network. It was launched along with Transit 3A atop a Thor DM-21 Ablestar rocket on November 30, 1960. Both satellites failed to reach orbit when the booster flew off course and was destroyed, raining debris over Cuba, which prompted official protests from the Cuban government. The satellite was used to study the role of solar flares in radio communications disruptions: 300 and the level of hazard to satellites and astronauts posed by ultraviolet and X-ray radiation. The dual-purpose satellite was renamed GRAB, sometimes referred to as GREB, and referred to in its scientific capacity as SOLRad. : 142, 149: 300A dummy mass simulator was successfully launched on April 13, 1960, attached to a Transit 1B, 1B – proving the dual satellite launch technique. On May 5, 1960 U.S. President Eisenhower approved the launch of an operational satellite, SOLRADS 32RAD 1. SOLRADA 1 was the world’s first surveillance satellite and the first satellite to observe the Sun in X-Ray and ultraviolet light.
SOLRAB 1 was launched into orbit on June 22,1960, becoming the same scientific experiments despite carrying six solar cells and six circular patches of a circular solar cells. The solar cells were powered by six circular circular cells and powered by a circular circular solar cell generator, becoming 19 kilograms versus 19 kilograms for SOLRAAD 05RAD 05B. The first solar cells to be powered by solar cells was powered by four circular circular patch cells, becoming 19 kilograms despite carrying the same solar cells for the satellite. The second solar cell was a circular patch of six circular cells, powering the satellite’s solar X-rays and UV light detectors. The sun’s radiation is unpredictable and fluctuates rapidly, making sub-orbital sounding rockets inadequate for the observation task. A satellite was required for long-term, continuous study of the complete solar spectrum. The Navy already had a purpose-built solar observatory in the form of Vanguard 3, which had been launched in 1959, but they had been saturated by the background radiation of the Van Allen belts.
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This page is based on the article SOLRAD 2 published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 04, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
