WRESAT or Weapons Research Establishment Satellite was the first

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

n satellite, named after its

designer A designer is a person who plans the form or structure of something before it is made, by preparing drawings or plans. In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, products, processes, laws, games, graphics, services, or exp ...

. WRESAT was launched on 29 November 1967 using a modified American Redstone rocket with two upper stages known as a

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from the

Woomera Test Range The RAAF Woomera Range Complex (WRC) is a major Australian military and civil aerospace facility and operation located in South Australia, approximately north-west of Adelaide. The WRC is operated by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), a d ...

in South Australia. The Sparta (left over from the joint Australian-US-UK Sparta program), was donated by the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. Australia became the seventh nation to have an Earth satellite after this launch, and the third nation to launch from its own territory, after the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

and the

(the UK, Canada and Italy's satellites were also launched on American rockets unlike the French ''

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,'' which launched on an indigenous rocket out of

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). WRESAT was cone shaped with the weight , length of and a mouth diameter of . It remained connected with the third rocket stage and possessed an overall length of . WRESAT circled the Earth on a nearly polar course, and later reentered the atmosphere after 642 revolutions on 10 January 1968, over the Atlantic Ocean. The battery-operated satellite sent data during its first 73 orbits of the Earth.

References

External links

Synopsis of WRESAT

A personal reminiscence of WRESAT
(Broken Link)
National Film Archive film clips of WRESAT

WRESAT
{{Orbital launches in 1967 Satellites formerly orbiting Earth Spacecraft launched in 1967 First artificial satellites of a country 1967 in Australia Satellites of Australia

See also

References

External links