Microsatellite Chibis-M has been put into orbit
:: 25.01.2012
January 25, at 03:18:30 MSK (23:18:30 / Jan 24 UTC) a small spacecraft Chibis-M has separated from space freighter Progress M-13M and began its autonomous mission.
Accroding to ballistician service of MCC, the microsatellite has been put into an orbit with parameters:
- Minimum altitude above Earth - 497.535 km
- Maximum altitude above Earth - 513.607 km
- Orbital period = 94.55 min
- Inclination 51.62 degrees
Few minutes after the separation, first telemetry has been received from Chibis-M. It confirmed that all service systems went online.
[...]
Orbit raising has been done to shape a working orbit for Chibis-M spacecraft that is intended for performing of a new Geo-Physical experiment to study physical processes that correlate with atmospheric lightning discharges.
The spacecraft was created in Institute of Space Research of Russian Academy of Science in collaboration with other scientific institutions.
About 1/3 of the spacecraft's mass is an assembly of instruments called
Groza (Russian: Thunderstorm). It's the 1st time when one satellite carries a range of observation instruments covering all bands of electromagnetic spectrum, from Gamma to Radio waves. This, as researches hope, will allow to register a large number of processes that happen during lightning discharges.
Groza assembly consists of detectors of X-Ray, Gamma, Ultra-violet and Radio bands 20-50 MHz, to register radiation emitted by electric discharges at altitudes between 13 and 20 km. Also it has instruments to study plasma fluctuations. To correlate these processes with lightning events, the assembly is also outfitted with a digital visible light camera.
[...]
The mass of microsatellite is about 40 kg.
The dimensions with antennae and solar arrays deployed are 1250x96 mm.
01-25-2012, 07:25 AM
