Explorer-1 rime'', also known as E1P and Electra, was a

CubeSat A CubeSat is a class of miniaturized satellite based around a form factor consisting of cubes. CubeSats have a mass of no more than per unit, and often use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components for their electronics and structure. CubeSat ...

-class picosatellite built by the Space Science and Engineering Laboratory (SSEL) at Montana State University. It was launched aboard a Taurus-XL rocket from

Vandenberg Air Force Base Vandenberg may refer to: * Vandenberg (surname), including a list of people with the name * USNS ''General Hoyt S. Vandenberg'' (T-AGM-10), transport ship in the United States Navy, sank as an artificial reef in Key West, Florida * Vandenberg Sp ...

, California on 4 March 2011, but failed to achieve orbit after the rocket malfunctioned. As part of NASA's ELaNA program, E1P was to be launched along with NASA's Glory satellite, Kentucky Space's

KySat-1 KySat-1 was an American satellite which was to have been operated by Kentucky Space. Designed to operate for eighteen to twenty four months, it was lost in a launch failure in March 2011 after the Taurus launch vehicle carrying it failed to ac ...

and the University of Colorado-Boulder's

Hermes Hermes (; grc-gre, Ἑρμῆς) is an Olympian deity in ancient Greek religion and mythology. Hermes is considered the herald of the gods. He is also considered the protector of human heralds, travellers, thieves, merchants, and orato ...

CubeSats. E1P was a reflight mission of ''

Explorer 1 Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States in 1958 and was part of the U.S. participation in the International Geophysical Year (IGY). The mission followed the first two satellites the previous year; the Soviet Union's ...

'', the first American satellite, using modern technology including a geiger tube donated by James Van Allen. The name of the satellite was also adopted from Van Allen, who referred to the satellite as ''Explorer-1 Prime'' prior to his death in 2006. It was originally intended to be launched in 2008 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the launch of ''Explorer 1''. If it had been successful, E1P would have been Montana's first successful launch of a satellite after the loss of SSEL's MEROPE in 2006. There was a spare,

Explorer-1 Prime Unit 2 M-Cubed is a miniaturized satellite built by students at the University of Michigan in a joint project run by the Michigan Exploration Laboratory (MXL) and JPL. It is an example of the popular CubeSat design for amateur satellites. It was launched ...

, that was launched with

NPP NPP may refer to: Politics * National People's Power, Sri Lanka *National Patriotic Party, Liberia * National People's Party (The Gambia) *National People's Party (India), a political party in India founded by PA Sangma *National Peoples Party ( ...

. The Michigan Exploration Laboratory (MXL) suspects that the M-Cubed CubeSat, a joint project run by MXL and JPL, became magnetically conjoined to Explorer-1 Prime Unit 2, a second CubeSat released at the same time, via strong onboard magnets used for passive attitude control (see: Magnetorquer), after deploying on October 28, 2011. This is the first non-destructive latching of two satellites.

References

Student satellites CubeSats Satellite launch failures Spacecraft launched in 2011 Picosatellites {{US-spacecraft-stub

See also

References