European Space Research Organization

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The European Space Research Organization ( ESRO ) was a European space research organization . ESRO was founded on June 14, 1962 by ten countries ( Belgium , Denmark , France , Italy , the Netherlands , Spain , Sweden , Switzerland , Great Britain and the Federal Republic of Germany ). ESRO built scientific satellites that were launched into orbit from the United States .

At the same time, the European Launcher Development Organization (ELDO) was founded in order to be able to launch satellites itself, but this did not succeed. At the European Space Conference from November 12 to 14, 1968 in Bad Godesberg , the merger of ESRO and ELDO into a unified organization was discussed. On May 30, 1975 the merger to today's European Space Agency (ESA) took place.

Satellite missions

Between 1967 and 1972 ESRO launched five satellites with the Scout-B rocket , one with the Scout-D1 and three with different versions of the Delta :

  1. Iris 1 (ESRO-2A), took off on May 29, 1967 from Vandenberg Air Force Base with a Scout-B, but did not reach orbit.
  2. Iris 2 (ESRO-2B) for research into solar radiation (Orbital Solar Observatory) and cosmic rays. He took off on May 16, 1968 from Vandenberg Air Force Base with a Scout-B, burned up on May 8, 1971 in the earth's atmosphere.
  3. Aurora (ESRO-1A), took off from Vandenberg Air Force Base on October 3, 1968.
  4. HEOS-1 also called Heos A1, took off on December 5, 1968 with a Delta-E1 from Kennedy Space Center , USA and burned up on October 28, 1975.
  5. Boreas (ESRO-1B), took off from Vandenberg Air Force Base on October 1, 1969 and burned up on November 23, 1969.
  6. HEOS-2 , launched on January 31, 1972 from Vandenberg Air Force Base with a Delta-L, burned up on August 5, 1974.
  7. TD-1A , launched on March 12, 1972 with a Thor Delta (Delta-N) missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base. The UV x-ray and gamma satellite worked, interrupted by two "sleep phases", until the fuel supplies were exhausted in May 1974. It burned up on January 9, 1980.
  8. ESRO-4 , took off on November 20, 1972 with a Scout-D1 and burned up on April 15, 1974 after a successful research mission.

Missions planned by ESRO and carried out by ESA

  1. COS-B
  2. GEOS 1 u. 2
  3. OTS
  4. Meteosat
  5. ISEE 2
  6. IUE
  7. EXOSAT

Others

In 1968, ESRO received a proposal from MBB for a flyby probe called "MESO" which was to explore the planet Mercury . However, the proposal was rejected in July 1969.

See also

literature

  • ESA History Advisory Committee: A history of the European Space Agency 1958–1987, Volume 1: The story of ESRO and ELDO (= ESA special publication 1235). European Space Agency 2001, ISBN 92-9092-536-1 , ISSN  1609-042X ( PDF, 3.0 MB )
  • Niklas Reinke: History of the German space policy. Concepts, influencing factors and interdependencies: 1923-2002 , Munich 2004, ISBN 3-486-56842-6

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ TD-1 ( Memento of October 16, 2006 in the Internet Archive ). ESA (PDF; 111 kB)
  2. ↑ MESO ( Memento from July 21, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ), August 9, 2004, accessed on March 24, 2012