 | DME
Credit - NASA
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Other Designations: Direct Measurement Explorer. Class: Earth. Type: Ionosphere. Nation: USA. Agency: NASA. Manufacturer: APL. Explorer 31, the Direct Measurement Explorer, was launched with a Canadian Alouette II on November 28, 1965, on a Thor-Agena rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The double-launch project, known as ISIS-X was the first in a new co-operative NASA-Canadian Defense Research Board program for International Satellites for Ionospheric Studies. Explorer 31 was in orbit with an apogee just over a kilometer more than Alouette's and with a perigee of just more than a kilometer lower. The orbits were some 3000 km at apogee and 500 km at perigee.
Explorer 31 was built for the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, by the Applied Physics Laboratory of The Johns Hopkins University. Eight ionospheric measurement experiments sampled the environment both forward and after the satellite's path. Explorer 31 was 0.76 m across the top and was 25 inches high. A spherical mass spectrometer protruded 0.58 m above the top surface, making the total height 0.64 m. The satellite was powered by solar cells which covered about 15 percent of the spacecraft's surface.
Typical orbit: 502 km x 2857 km at 80 degrees inclination. Mass: 99 kg (218 lb).
DME Chronology - 1965 November 29 - Explorer 31 - Program: Explorer. Launch Site: Vandenberg. Launch Complex: SLC2E. Launch Vehicle: Delta. Mass: 99 kg (218 lb). Perigee: 505 km (313 mi). Apogee: 2,833 km (1,760 mi). Inclination: 79.80 deg. Period: 119.70 min.
Ionospheric research; data correlated with Alouette 2. The Explorer 31, Direct Measurement Explorer, was launched with a Canadian Alouette II on November 28, 1965, on a Thor-Agena rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The double-launch project, known as ISIS-X was the first in a new co-operative NASA-Canadian Defense Research Board program for International Satellites for Ionospheric Studies. Explorer 31 was in orbit with an apogee just over a kilometre more than Alouette's and with a perigee of just more than a kilometre lower. The orbits were some 3000 km at apogee and 500 km at perigee. Eight ionospheric measurement experiments sampled the environment both forward and after the satellite's path.
Bibliography:- McDowell, Jonathan, Jonathan's Space Home Page (launch records), Harvard University, 1997-present. Web Address when accessed: http://www.planet4589.org/jsr.html.
- JPL Mission and Spacecraft Library, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 1997. Web Address when accessed: http://msl.jpl.nasa.gov/home.html.
- Aerospace Yearbook, 1966,
- NASA Report, Results from Alouette 1, Explorer 20, Alouette 2, and Explorer 31, Web Address when accessed: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19900020374_1990020374.pdf.
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© Mark Wade, 1997 - 2008 except where otherwise noted.
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