Sphinx is the designation of an American test satellite. The Sphinx satellite was the payload for the first
Titan IIIE
The Titan IIIE or Titan 3E, also known as the Titan III-Centaur, was an American expendable launch system. Launched seven times between 1974 and 1977, it enabled several high-profile NASA missions, including the Voyager and Viking planetary pro ...
Centaur
A centaur ( ; grc, κένταυρος, kéntauros; ), or occasionally hippocentaur, is a creature from Greek mythology with the upper body of a human and the lower body and legs of a horse.
Centaurs are thought of in many Greek myths as bein ...
rocket. It was launched on February 11, 1974 from a Titan IIIE Centaur. However, the rocket did not reach Earth orbit
because the second stage failed to ignite, at which point the
range safety
In the field of rocketry, range safety may be assured by a system which is intended to protect people and assets on both the rocket range and downrange in cases when a launch vehicle might endanger them. For a rocket deemed to be ''off course ...
officer ordered the rocket destroyed.
The satellite was destroyed along with its support, the launched with the Viking Dynamic Simulator.
SPHINX stood for Space Plasma High Voltage Interaction Experiment.
It was designed to test high-voltage equipment in outer space.
See also
*
1974 in spaceflight
On March 29, 1974 Mariner 10
''Mariner 10'' was an American robotic space probe launched by NASA on 3 November 1973, to fly by the planets Mercury and Venus. It was the first spacecraft to perform flybys of multiple planets.
''Marin ...
References
External links
Entry at Gunter's Space Page
Satellite launch failures
Spacecraft launched in 1974
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