*** Welcome to piglix ***

Explorer 4

Explorer 4
Explorer4 instruments.png
Explorer 4
Mission type Earth science
Operator Army Ballistic Missile Agency
Harvard designation 1958 Epsilon 1
SATCAT № 9
Mission duration 71 days
Spacecraft properties
Manufacturer Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Launch mass 25.50 kilograms (56.2 lb)
Start of mission
Launch date July 26, 1958, 15:00:57 (1958-07-26UTC15:00:57Z) UTC
Rocket Juno I
Launch site Cape Canaveral LC-5
End of mission
Last contact October 5, 1958 (1958-10-06)
Decay date October 23, 1959
Orbital parameters
Reference system Geocentric
Regime Medium Earth
Semi-major axis 7,616.2 kilometers (4,732.5 mi)
Eccentricity 0.1279360055923462
Perigee 263 kilometers (163 mi)
Apogee 2,213 kilometers (1,375 mi)
Inclination 50.29999923706055 degrees
Period 110.20 minutes
RAAN 82.42 degrees
Argument of perigee 57.72 degrees
Mean anomaly 303.52 degrees
Mean motion 15.52
Epoch 2 October 1959, 06:53:14 UTC
Revolution number 6070

Explorer 4 was an American satellite launched on July 26, 1958. It was instrumented by Dr. James van Allen's group. The Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency had initially planned two satellites for the purposes of studying the Van Allen radiation belts and the effects of nuclear explosions upon these belts (and the Earth's magnetosphere in general), however Explorer 4 was the only such satellite launched as the other, Explorer 5, suffered launch failure.

Explorer 4 was a cylindrically shaped satellite instrumented to make the first detailed measurements of charged particles (protons and electrons) trapped in the terrestrial radiation belts.

Launched from a Juno I rocket, the mission remained secret from the public for six months.

The satellite telemetry was analyzed for three Operation Argus nuclear weapons tests at high altitude.

An unexpected tumble motion of the satellite made the interpretation of the detector data very difficult. The low-power transmitter and the plastic scintillator detector failed September 3, 1958. The two Geiger-Müller tubes and the caesium iodide crystal detectors continued to operate normally until September 19, 1958. The high-power transmitter ceased sending signals on October 5, 1958. It is believed that exhaustion of the power batteries caused these failures. The spacecraft decayed from orbit after 454 days on October 23, 1959.



...
Wikipedia

...