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ARGOS (USA)
The Advanced Research and Global Observations
Satellite (ARGOS) was a satellite funded out of the U.S. Department of
Defence Space Test Program and operated by the U.S. Air Force. The mission
was launched on 23 Feb 1999, and operations continued until 31 July 2003.
Note that this is not the same mission as the Argos System, a series of
NOAA satellites.
Mission Overview
ARGOS was launched from Vanguard Air Force Base on a Delta II rocket, and
operated by the Air Force’s Research, Development, Test and
Evaluation Support Complex (RSC) at Kirkland Air Force Base. The satellite
carried nine different instruments, each associated with different research
groups with different agencies. The satellite was placed in a sun-synchronous
roughly circular polar orbit at an altitude of 833 kilometres. Operations
were ceased on 31 July 2003.
Instrumentation
ARGOS carried nine different instruments, though only one of relevance to
high-energy astrophysics:
- The Unconventional Stellar Aspect (USA) instrument (also known by the less
memorable name “NRL-801 experiment”) was a Naval Research Lab
instrument to observe bright x-ray sources. It consisted of a pair of
large-area gas scintillation proportional counters sensitive to 1–15 keV
mounted on a two-axis pointing system. It was a reflight of the
SPARTAN 1 instrument flown
on the Space Shuttle Discovery in June 1985. USA included precise
(roughly microsecond accuracy) time-tagging of events using an integrated
GPS receiver.
The USA instrument operated from May 1, 1999 through November 16, 2000.
[USA at NRL] http://xweb.nrl.navy.mil/usa/ no longer online
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Page authors: Lorella Angelini Jesse Allen
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Last modified: Thursday, 24-Sep-2020 17:21:49 EDT
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