ORS 3

Launch data: Designation  13064AF Launch date  20 Nov 2013 - 01:15 UT Launch site  WI, LA-0B Launch vehicle  Minotaur-1 Mission  Imaging, Reconnaissance Earth orbit: Perigee / Apogee  506 x 511 km Eccentricity   Inclination  40.5 deg Period  94.7 min

Description:

• A U.S. Air Force Minotaur 1 rocket will launch the Operationally Responsive Space 3, or ORS 3, mission. ORS 3 will test space-based rocket tracking technology and an autonomous flight termination system.
• ORS 3 (Operationally Responsive Space 3) is the third mission of the ORS program. In contrast to the first two missions, it will not be a satellite, but experimental avionics for the launch vehicle, which are mounted in the avionics section of the last stage.
  
• The goal of the ORS Office is to develop the capability to rapidly reconfigure, launch, and operate space vehicles in a matter of days.
• The flight's primary objective is testing space-based rocket tracking technology and an autonomous termination system smart enough to destroy the rocket if it flies off course. The Air Force is migrating toward using GPS receivers on rockets to avoid the overhead costs of legacy radar trackers. The next step will be for launch vehicles to track themselves, comparing real-time GPS positions to predicted values, and issuing a command to destroy itself if it veers too far from its planned flight path.

Mission details:

• Launch delayed from June and September 2013.
• The ORS-3 mission was launched by a Minotaur I from Wallops Island on Nov 20, 2013 into a 497 x 507 km x 40.5 deg orbit carrying the STPSat-3 research satellite and two CubeStack wafers which eject a total of 28 cubesats.
• STPSat-3 carries technology and space weather experiments, including an important Total Solar Irradiance sensor.
  The ORS-3 Minotaur final stage carries an experimental launch tracking system and a drag device to reduce the amount of time it spends in orbit. The upper wafer carries four 6U Cubesat dispensers for NRO missions, and the lower wafer carries eight 3U P-POD cubesat dispensers for various payloads including NASA's ELANA IV cubesat cluster. The basic 1U Cubesat is a 0.1m cube; 3U Cubesats are 0.1 x 0.1 x 0.3m boxes. The 28 Cubesats on the launch total 48U of volume.
• Counting the final stage as a payload (since it carries active experiments) this total of 30 payloads more than doubles the existing record for active payloads on a single launch. The previous record was the 2007-012 Dnepr launch, with 14 payloads. The three Soviet Kol'tso radar calibration missions 1988-113, 1989-100, and 1990-104 (Kosmos-1985, 2053 and 2106) appear to have each carried 36 subsatellites, but these were passive calibration targets. The SDIO Delta 181 launch in 1988 had 15 payloads, but some were also passive calibration objects.
• The ELANA IV cluster consists of 10 of the 1U Cubesats and one 3U:
  • TJ3Sat, from Thomas Jefferson High School, Virginia
  • DragonSat, from Drexel University, Penn. and the US Naval Academy, Annapolis
  • COPPER, from Saint Louis University, Missouri
  • ChargerSat 1, from U. Alabama-Huntsville
  • SwampSat, from U. Florida-Gainesville
  • Ho'oponopono 2, a 3U sat for radar calibration, from U. Hawaii-Manoa
  • KySat-2 from Kentucky Space, Lexington, Kentucky
  • CAPE 2, from U. Louisiana-Lafayette
  • Trailblazer, from U. New Mexico-Albequerque
  • Vermont Lunar Cubesat, from Vermont Technical College, testing equipment for a proposed future lunar mission
  • PhoneSat-2.4, from NASA-Ames, with systems based on a Nexus/Android cellphone
• Two further 1U satellites are packaged with ELANA IV:
  • NPS-SCAT for the US Navy Postgraduate School, with a solar cell exposure experiment
  • Black Knight 1, for the US Military Academy at West Point, New York
• This accounts for 5 of the 8 P-POD deployers on the lower deck. The remaining satellites are:
  • Firefly, a 3U science sat for the National Science Foundation built by the Hawk Institute for Space Sciences in Maryland in collaboration with Siena College, that will study terrestrial gamma-ray flashes;
  • Horus (STARE-B), a 3U Lawrence Livermore experiment for space debris monitoring;
  • SENSE-A and SENSE-B 3U ionospheric monitoring satellites for the USAF Space and Missile Center
  • 8 Prometheus low orbit tactical communications satellites, each 1.5U, for the US Southern Command (SOCOM), developed by Los Alamos.
  • ORSES, a 3U ORS Enabler Satellite, a tactical comms satellite for the USAF Operationally Responsive Space office and the US Space and Missile Defense Command.
  • ORS Tech 1 and 2, 3U technology demo satellites for USAF ORS developed by APL.
• All of the satellites on the launch are US satellites (led by organizations from 13 different US states), so this also sets a record for the number of satellites from a single country orbited on a single launch. Both the absolute and single-country record may not stand long, with launches planned later this year that will surpass the ORS-3 record.
• Dec 2013: Several of the ORS-3 cubesat operators have reported successful contact with their satellites, suggesting that the deployments occurred as scheduled.
  However, there is no orbital data for most of them yet.