Minisat
High above the Canary Islands, the air-launched booster, nicknamed "Gran Canaria,"
was set free from its L-1011 carrier jet "Stargazer" at 7:59 a.m. EDT (1159 GMT) and soared into orbit.
Launch operations were staged from the Gando Air Base.
The launch goes into the history books as the first from Western Europe..
The launch is reported to have cost US$10.4m. The satellite measures 1145x1005x1170mm, with four 45W, 1.5m deployable panels. The spacecraft power system is 28V unregulated with 60W average power requirement. Uplink and downlink is via S-band, 5W at 1Mbps, and data storage is 32Mbyte. It is 1-axis stabilised with an accuracy of 3 degrees. The spacecraft bus and payload roughly share 50% each of the available mass. The satellite is built by the spanish CASA company, and will aid in the study of background radiation in the extreme ultraviolet spectrum, low energy gamma radiation, and the behaviour of liquid bridges in microgravity. The platform is spin stabilised. It is the first in a series of planned satellites based on this bus, and is designed to operate for 2 years. Minisat-1 would fly a remote sensing payload, and Minisat-2 would carry payloads for geostationary communications.
