May 26 1983
From The Space Library
NASA launched ESA's X-ray observatory, Exosat, from Vandenberg Air Force Base at 3:18 p.m. GMT on a Delta. Designed to study cosmic X-ray sources from 0.04 to 80 Kev, the craft carried four instruments: two imaging telescopes, a large-area proportional counter array, and a gas-scintillation spectrometer. It reached a planned highly elliptical orbit with 192,000-kilometer apogee, 340-kilometer perigee, and 72.5° inclination. ESA's operations control center (ESOC) took over shortly after liftoff. (NASA MOR M-492-304-83-01 [prelaunch] May 20/83; ESA Infos 18, 20)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
