Ariel V
| Ariel V | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Country: |
 United Kingdom / United States
|
| Operator: | SRC / NASA |
| COSPAR-ID : | 1974-077A |
| Mission dates | |
| Dimensions: | 129 kg |
| Begin: | October 15, 1974, 07:47 UTC |
| Starting place: | San Marco platform |
| Launcher: | Scout B1 |
| Status: | burned up on March 14, 1980 |
| Orbit data | |
| Rotation time : | 94.9 min |
| Orbit inclination : | 2.9 ° |
| Apogee height : | 549 km |
| Perigee height : | 504 km |
Ariel V was a British-American X-ray satellite from the 1970s, developed in collaboration between the British Science Research Council and NASA .
Ariel V (called UK5 before launch) was placed in low, near-equatorial Earth orbit on October 15, 1974 from the San Marco Platform off the coast of Kenya with a Scout rocket . The mission ended on March 14, 1980 with the re-entry into the earth's atmosphere.
Ariel V was a spin stabilized satellite that rotated around its axis every six seconds. Four instruments for the energy range 0.3-40 keV looked into a small region of the sky of about 10 ° around the satellite axis . Two other instruments scanned almost the entire sky with the help of the rotation of the satellite.
Ariel V monitored and studied the changes in brightness of cosmic X-ray sources . He first established that Seyfert-1 galaxies are X-ray sources and found the emission line of iron at around 7 keV in the spectrum of galaxy clusters .
Web links
- Ariel V page at NASA (English)
- Ariel 5 (UK 5) in the Encyclopedia Astronautica (English)