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Thor-Agena
Thor-Agena was a series of orbital launch vehicles. The launch vehicles used the Douglas Aircraft Company, Douglas-built Thor (rocket family), Thor first Multistage rocket, stage and the Lockheed Corporation, Lockheed-built RM-81 Agena, Agena second stages. They are thus cousins of the more-famous Thor-Deltas, which founded the Delta (rocket family), Delta rocket family. The first attempted launch of a Thor-Agena was in January 1959. The first successful launch was on 28 February 1959, launching ''Discoverer 1''. It was the first two-stage launch vehicle to place a satellite into orbit. Missions Among other uses, the clandestine CORONA (satellite), CORONA program used Thor-Agena from June 1959 until January 1968 to launch United States military reconnaissance satellites operated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). During this program, Thor-Agena launch vehicles were used in 145 launch attempts, now known to have been part of satellite surveillance programs. Also, ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Discoverer 1
Discoverer 1 was the first of a series of satellites which were part of the Corona (satellite), CORONA reconnaissance satellite program. It was launched on a Thor-Agena, Thor-Agena A rocket on 28 February 1959 at 21:49:16 GMT from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It was a prototype of the Corona (satellite), KH-1 satellite, but did not contain either a camera or a film capsule.Clayton K. S. Chun, ''Thunder Over the Horizon: From V-2 Rockets to Ballistic Missiles'' (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006), pp. 74–75 It was the first satellite launched toward the South Pole in an attempt to achieve a polar orbit, but was unsuccessful. A CIA report, later declassified, concluded that "Today, most people believe the Discoverer 1 landed somewhere near the South Pole". The Discover program was managed by the DARPA, Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United States Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense and the United States Air Force, U.S. Air Force. The pri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thor (rocket Family)
Thor was a US space launch vehicle derived from the PGM-17 Thor intermediate-range ballistic missile. The Thor rocket was the first member of the Delta rocket family of space launch vehicles. The last launch of a direct derivative of the Thor missile occurred in 2018 as the first stage of the final Delta II. Thor-Able Thor was first used as a launch vehicle during the testing program of the warhead reentry vehicle for the Atlas missile. For these three tests a Thor core stage was topped by the Able second stage. Able used the Aerojet AJ-10-40 engine from the Vanguard second stage. The first such launch, 116, was lost on 23 April 1958 due to a turbopump failure in the main engine. The recovery of the reentry vehicles on the succeeding two attempts were not successful. Three mice, one on each vehicle, died in these tests. The Able stage from the Atlas reentry vehicle tests was upgraded to become the Able I with a third stage consisting of an unguided Altair X-248 solid-fuel rocket ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1962 In Spaceflight
Orbital and Suborbital launches Deep space rendezvous Orbital launch statistics By country By rocket By orbit References Footnotes {{Orbital launches in 1962 Spaceflight by year ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RM-81 Agena
The RM-81 Agena () was an American rocket upper stage and satellite bus which was developed by Lockheed Corporation initially for the canceled WS-117L reconnaissance satellite program. Following the division of WS-117L into SAMOS and Corona for image intelligence, and MIDAS for early warning, the Agena was later used as an upper stage, and an integrated component, for several programs, including Corona reconnaissance satellites and the Agena Target Vehicle used to demonstrate rendezvous and docking during Project Gemini. It was used as an upper stage on the Atlas, Thor, Thorad and Titan IIIB rockets, and considered for others including the Space Shuttle and Atlas V. A total of 365 Agena rockets were launched between February 28, 1959 and February 1987. Only 33 Agenas carried NASA payloads and the vast majority were for DoD programs. On some missions, the payload was built directly into the Agena, which provided it with electric power, communications and three-axis stabilizati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Discoverer 14
Discoverer 14, also known as Corona 9009, was a spy satellite used in the Corona program managed by Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the Department of Defense and the United States Air Force. On 19 August 1960, usable photographic film images of the Soviet Union taken by the satellite were recovered by a C-119 recovery aircraft. This was the first successful recovery of film from an orbiting satellite and the first mid-air recovery of an object returning from Earth orbit. Background "Discoverer" was the civilian designation and cover for the Corona satellite photo-reconnaissance series of satellites managed by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense and the U.S. Air Force. The primary goal of the satellites was to replace the U-2 spyplane in surveilling the Sino-Soviet Bloc, determining the disposition and speed of production of Soviet missiles and long-range bombers assets. The Corona program was also used to produce maps and charts f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nimbus 2
Nimbus 2 (also called Nimbus-C) was a meteorological satellite. It was the second in a series of the Nimbus program. Launch Nimbus 2 was launched on May 15, 1966, by a Thor-Agena rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, United States. The spacecraft functioned nominally until January 17, 1969. The satellite orbited the Earth once every 1 hour and 48 minutes, at an inclination of 100°. Its perigee was and its apogee was . Mission The second in a series of second-generation meteorological research and development satellites, Nimbus 2 was designed to serve as a stabilized, Earth-oriented platform for the testing of advanced meteorological sensor systems and the collecting of meteorological data. The polar-orbiting spacecraft consisted of three major elements: (1) a torus-shaped sensory ring, (2) solar paddles, and (3) the control system housing. The solar paddles and control system housing were connected to the sensory ring by a truss structure, giving the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1959 In Spaceflight
Luna 1 was the first spacecraft to leave the gravitational influence of Earth. Also in 1959, Luna 2 was the first spacecraft to reach the surface of another celestial body, impacting the Moon, and Luna 3 returned the first images of the far side of the Moon. Overview Orbital and suborbital launches Deep Space Rendezvous Orbital launch statistics By country By rocket By orbit See also *Timeline of spaceflight This is a timeline of known spaceflights, both crewed and uncrewed, sorted chronologically by launch date. Due to its large size, the timeline has been split into smaller articles, one for each year since 1951. There is a separate list for ... References Footnotes {{Orbital launches in 1959 1959 in spaceflight Spaceflight by year ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Discoverer 17
Discoverer 17, also known as Corona 9012, was an American optical reconnaissance satellite launched on 12 November 1960 at 20:38:00 GMT. It was the second of ten Corona KH-2 satellites, based on the Agena-B. Background Discoverer 17 was the second of the KH-2 Corona spy satellites, which was distinguished from the predecessor KH-1 series in its incorporation of the improved C' camera, which replaced the C model carried on KH-1 missions. The improved camera had variable image motion compensation so that its carrying satellites could be flown in differing orbits. Like the C camera, the C' was manufactured by Fairchild Camera and Instrument under the supervision of Itek, a defense contractor that specialized in making cameras for spy satellites. The satellite also carried a Transit on Discoverer (TOD) payload Discoverer 16, the first of the KH-2 series, had failed to reach orbit after its launch on 26 October 1960. Mission The launch of Discoverer 17 occurred at 20:38:00 GMT ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Douglas Aircraft Company
The Douglas Aircraft Company was an American aerospace manufacturer, aerospace and military, defense company based in Southern California. Founded in 1921 by Donald Wills Douglas Sr., it merged with McDonnell Aircraft in 1967 to form McDonnell Douglas, where it operated as a division. History 1920s The company was founded as the Douglas Company by Donald Wills Douglas Sr. on July 22, 1921, in Santa Monica, California, following dissolution of the Davis-Douglas Company. An early claim to fame was the first aerial circumnavigation, first circumnavigation of the world by air in Douglas airplanes in 1924. In 1923, the U.S. Army Air Service was interested in carrying out a mission to circumnavigate the Earth for the first time by aircraft, a program called "World Flight". Donald Douglas proposed a modified Douglas DT to meet the Army's needs. The two-place, open cockpit DT biplane torpedo bomber had previously been produced for the United States Navy, U.S. Navy.Rumerman, Judy. "The D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Castor (rocket Stage)
Castor is a family of solid-fuel rocket stages and boosters built by Thiokol (now Northrop Grumman) and used on a variety of launch vehicles. They were initially developed as the second-stage motor of the Scout rocket. The design was based on the MGM-29 Sergeant, a surface-to-surface missile developed for the United States Army at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Versions Flown versions Castor 1 :The Castor 1 was first used for a successful suborbital launch of a Scout X-1 rocket on September 2, 1960. :It was long, in diameter, and had a burn time of 27 seconds. Castor 1 stages were also used as strap-on boosters for launch vehicles using Thor first stages, including the Delta D. (A Delta-D was used in 1964 to launch Syncom-3, the first satellite placed in a geostationary orbit.) Castor 1 stages were used in 141 launch attempts of Scout and Delta rockets, only 2 of which were failures. They were also used on some thrust-assisted Thor-Agena launchers. The last launch us ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alouette 1
''Alouette 1'' is a deactivated Canadian satellite that studied the ionosphere. Launched in 1962, it was Canada's first satellite, and the first satellite constructed by a country other than the Soviet Union or the United States. Canada was the fourth country to operate a satellite, as the British '' Ariel 1'', constructed in the United States by NASA, preceded ''Alouette 1'' by five months. The name "Alouette" came from the French for " skylark" and the French-Canadian folk song of the same name. A key device on ''Alouette'' were the radio antennas consisting of thin strips of beryllium copper bent into a slight U-shape and then rolled up into small disks in a fashion similar to a measuring tape. When triggered, the rotation of the satellite created enough centrifugal force to pull the disk away from the spacecraft body, and the shaping of the metal caused it to unwind into a long spiral. The result was a stiff circular cross-section antenna known as a "STEM", for "storab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Arizona
The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university established in the Arizona Territory. The University of Arizona is one of three universities governed by the Arizona Board of Regents (the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, and Northern Arizona University). , the university enrolled 53,187 students in 22 separate colleges/schools, including the Eller College of Management, the Wyant College of Optical Sciences, the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix, College of Medicine – Phoenix, the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson, College of Medicine – Tucson, and the James E. Rogers College of Law. The university is Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
