The Swedish Prisma satellites, named Mango and Tango, have now separated. The satellites had been clamped together since the successful launch in June.
The Tango spacecraft will be separated from Mango in a direction such that the relative orbit will be safe even without active thrusting. The separation will also allow for good viewing conditions with the VBS and DVS. The orbit control functionality on Mango will be disabled during the first orbits after separation. After evaluation of the separation impulse, a ground calculated cancellation delta-V will be executed to keep the two satellites close to each other in near future. After additional assessment of the GPS navigation and orbit control functions, the autonomous orbit control will be enabled. Read more
PICARD : une mission originale dédiée au Soleil et à son influence sur le climat de la Terre
Le micro-satellite français PICARD, financé par le CNES, a été lancé mardi 15 juin à 16h42, heure de Paris, par une fusée Dniepr depuis la base de Yasny en Russie. Dans le cadre d'une mission scientifique internationale réunissant plusieurs instituts et laboratoires, il embarquait à son bord trois instruments qui permettront d'améliorer notre connaissance du fonctionnement du Soleil et de mieux comprendre son influence sur le climat de la Terre. L'un d'eux a été conçu et réalisé par le Laboratoire atmosphères, milieux, observations spatiales (LATMOS(/IPSL) : il s'agit du télescope imageur SODISM qui permettra de mesurer le diamètre du Soleil avec une précision inégalée à ce jour. Read more (French)
Launched on June 15, 2010, CNES's Picard microsatellite is designed to simultaneously measure parameters such as the Sun's speed of rotation, radiated power, sunspots, figure and diameter, in order to better understand its inner workings. The mission also intends to investigate the relationship between variations in solar activity and climate change here on Earth. And the microsatellite is expected to send back data needed to improve models used for forecasting solar activity.
The Picard mission was named after the French astronomer of the 17th century Jean Picard (1620-1682) who achieved the first accurate measurements of the solar diameter. These measurements are especially important as they were made during a period when the solar activity was minimum characterized by a sun nearly without sunspots between 1645 and 1710. This period was found by G. Spörer using sunspots observations gathered in Europe and this period is now named Maunder minimum. By comparison between the diameter during the Maunder minimum and the diameter when the sun was active, a variation has been found leading to the question still without answer "are diameter and activity linked". During this period in Europe, there was an unusually cold climate.
The Swedish Prisma satellites have been successfully launched aboard a Dnepr launcher from Yasny, Russia, today at 14.42 UTC. Sixteen minutes after launch, the two Prisma satellites were released, clamped together in launch configuration. The mission control centre of the Swedish Space Corporation had its first contact with Prisma 16.14 UTC. The operations team could verify that the solar array panels had been deployed as planned and that the satellites are in a nominal state. During the coming days, all subsystems on both satellites will be successively verified, leading up to the planned separation of the satellites - Mango and Tango - on 3 August. Read more
Along with the spacecraft, an Advanced Avionics Unit-1 (BPA-1), a payload, inseparable from the upper stage, will be delivered into orbit. BPA-1 is an experimental equipment designed for use in the navigation systems of civil airplanes, spacecraft and launch vehicles. The avionics unit was developed and manufactured by NPP Khartron-Arkos (Kharkov, Ukraine) on order of National Space Agency of Ukraine. Source
Russia's Strategic Missile Forces (SMF) launched on Tuesday a converted Russian intercontinental ballistic missile carrying three foreign satellites from a missile site in the Urals region, a SMF spokesman said. The spokesman said an RS-20B missile delivered the French satellite Picard, the Swedish satellite Prisma and the Ukrainian satellite BPA-1 into low Earth orbit. Source