Prospero (satellite)

Prospero (also X-3 ) is the name of the single with a UK launch vehicle (type Black Arrow ) satellites launched. The satellite was developed at the "Royal Aircraft Establishment " in Farnborough in the 1960s. It was launched on October 28, 1971 in Woomera ( Australia) and orbits the Earth on a 82 degree inclined orbit. Its perigee at an altitude of 531 km and its apogee of 1403 km.

The 66- kilogram satellite, which orbits the Earth today, carried out measurements of the frequency of micrometeorites. By 1973, the satellite provided the data of the experiments conducted. He was then contacted to 1996 only once a year. Radio amateurs were the signal of the satellite last received in 2000.

Just three months before its launch, the British government announced the stop of the space project. This also had an impact on the naming. Originally, the satellite " Puck ", should read, after the tricky elves of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Ultimately, it was called " Prospero " after the main character in Shakespeare's The Tempest. There is a magician who flees on a flimsy boat before a deadly intrigue, standet on an island and from there makes for righteousness.

In 1995, the competent public company Royal Aircraft Establishment ( RAE) was merged into the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA ), which was again split in 2001. In 2011, several students of the Mullard Institute for Space Sciences try to reactivate the satellite at University College London after 40 years. However, many technical data that would assist in the reactivation, has been lost. The important contact codes were found more or less randomly on a piece of paper in the British National Archives in London.

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