Viking (satellite)

Viking is a Swedish geophysical satellite. He is also Sweden's first satellite. He was taken on February 22, 1986 at 01:44:35 UTC clock from Kourou as piggyback payload on Ariane 1 rocket together with the French satellite SPOT -1 into space.

He should explore the interactions between the solar wind and the electromagnetic field of the earth. For this he was brought to a very eccentric train with about 814 km perigee and 13,530 km apogee about, so that it is at an orbital period of 261 min over 215 min at a height of more than 4000 km. The inclination of the web is 98.70 °. The satellite with the shape of an octagonal flat washer ( 190 cm diameter, 50 cm high) was spin stabilized and its solar cells from a total of 2.2 m² surface provided a power of 85 watts ( they were supported by NiCd batteries with 12 Ah capacity).

Viking had a launch mass of about 530 kg and a dry mass of 286 kg, with only 40 kg accounting for scientific equipment. This consisted of a UV light meter for auroral studies, plasma wave detector in the high -and low- frequency range, a vector - electrometer, plasma spectrometer and magnetometer. The individual experiments were contributed by various groups of scientists from different countries (Sweden, Canada, Denmark, France, Norway, USA and Germany ). To measure the electric fields in all three spatial directions, he unfolded in orbit two 4 m long rods in the axial direction and unrolled four cables of 40 m length each with a sensor system at the end.

He delivered until May 12, 1987 ( more than 200 days longer than planned) very valuable data (via S-band ) to the ground station at Esrange (Sweden).