plenty of satellites of a similar size are still made without cleanrooms. The only benefit of clean rooms (outside of plantery missions where there is a big requirement to avoid contamination) is no dust that could jam moving parts, no moving parts no worries.
So, the bad news is that the rocket blew up, the good news is that we have excellent sub-orbital telemetry of the launch pad, so I would qualify that as a partial success.
Actually not far from the truth. Apollo 13 was a success. Not in flying to the Moon, but in gathering data and experience with worst case scenarios in space. Success was there, just the mission profile changed.
@@HappyBeezerStudios Also, they brought the whole crew home safe, when there was a much greater risk of that not happening than in the usual (still quite dangerous) Moon missions.
stayputnik was one of the news headlines mocking the first american failure to put their satellite in space. So the KSP probe is named for the news headline which is making fun of an american satellite by making a play on words about the russian satellite.
The term "Stayputnik" was also applied to Mercury-Redstone I, a qualification flight that disconnected its umbilicals in the wrong order and shut down the engine after rising about 4 inches.
Scott, Sputnik could have also been put in space significantly earlier if Korolev hadn't outwitted his superiors and made №7 the main choice instead of military preferred №9. And history had proven that he was right. The latter one would have became obsolete in short order while the former one is probably the most venerated launch vehicle in existence and is still in use.
I read the official NASA history of the Vanguard Program, and it was actually quite an undertaking. They had to build a space program from scratch, using the Air Force's missile testing station on Cape Canaveral. It was especially interesting how they developed the technology of real-time telemetry using an early computer.
It should be noted that the original plan for the Vanguard mission that was infamously touted as "America's answer to Sputnik" was to test integration of the stages, not to place anything in orbit. Of course pressure was applied to the project management, and they agreed to try orbiting one of the small satellites, alas. I recommend a wonderful 1961 book "Project Vanguard" by Kurt R. Stehling, propulsion engineer on the Vanguard team.
Elvis was singing “ Wear My Ring Around Your Neck” when Vangaurd went into orbit, 1958. It’s still there 65 years later. Elvis’s first songs are 119 light years out in space and are brand new hits, from earth. Shuttle Discovery, would take you 37 thousand years to travel 1 light year. You have 118 more to go. Got the time? Something to ponder.👍
Scott - Many members of that Vanguard project team .(Naval Research Lab, APL, grad students, Van Allen’s students, etc.) became the core group for NASA Goddard when NASA was established (Oct. 1, 1958) by President Eisenhower.
If someone with the money and will wanted to, they could recover Vanguard 1. I'm not sure if the U.S still has claims to it or whether it is officially 'space junk', but it would be a pretty awesome museum piece.
There's plenty of time, it's estimated to stay up there until somewhere around the year 2200. Heck, by then maybe it'll be a tourist attraction, "come visit Earth, see the oldest human satellite."
We need to make a space museum for all the old satellites and hardware in orbit. Imagine the kids go on a week trip to space instead of just Washington DC where they can be inspired.
Could have shown some KSP footage using the US & Soviet Probe Pack. I know it's fully compatible with 1.3, not sure about 1.3.1 or 1.4+ I think the author may have stopped updating it. Hopefully someone picks it up if so, because it's one of the coolest packs out there.
Very interesting! Now, I have to go and see if I can continue Surviving Mars. Thanks, Scott. I'm addicted to that damn game now! :P How are you surviving Mars? Sorry if I missed any further let's play videos. I watched ALL of your Surviving Mars videos and immediately pre-ordered the full package (w/ season pass). I _never_ do that with games anymore! Damn you, Scott! Damn you! (For turning me onto a great game that is sucking my time away like a pipe leak on Mars! :P )
If Vanguard 1 has a chance of remaining in orbit for another 40 years, lets have a crowd funded project to build and launch a recovery mission to bring Vanguard home, intact, to commemorate 100 years in orbit. This would be perfect for material scientists to examine the endurance of the materials and then Vanguard can then be put in exhibit in the Air & Space museum.
the historical presidence would be amazing! I won't be alive in 40 years though.. can't we do it SOON? I believe (and history shows) that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE. If the will is there it WILL happen.
I gotta feeling that at some point in the future as Vanguard is nearing the end of its time in space and when its getting close to falling back to earth that at that time there gonna wanna attempt to recover the satellite. Case at that point it would be considered a valuable piece of history. I also got a strong feeling that due to the progression of technology there attempt to recover it would be in there capabilities to do so.
Not sure if you read comments on older vids, but could you make video about oldest operational satellite or longest operational satellite, or maybe just list of the best of the best in multiple categories.
Hi Scott, love your vids. An unrelated question. The Project Orion spacecraft concept uses nukes exploding to provide thrust in space. There is no shockwave in space, as you said, how, if at all, can this work?
Hey Scott, how small do you think we can make a conventional liquid-fuelled engine? Could they go down to a scale where they might power something that would normally use a solid-fuel model rocket motor?
There seems to be no theoretical reason why you couldn't make one ridiculously small. My first thought was that you'd run into the physics of very small tubes - it is difficult to push a liquid down a feed pipe when the cross-sectional area becomes small relative to the circumference because of surface friction effects - but then you look at things like modern inkjet printers which happily push very precise amounts of liquid down pipes too small to see with the naked eye. How much energy it takes to do so is another question. It is easy to imagine a tiny rocket motor using more energy to run the fuel pumps than it produces in usable thrust. So good question: disregarding economics, what is likely to be the smallest *practical* liquid fueled rocket?
I've been trying to get into playing through heavily modded KSP so it's reaallyy realistic and, very hard hah. And even on Wikipedia and other websites it's hard to find engine types and stages so I can try to replicate these missions.
So why were these early sats all spheriod shaped? Was it so that it would somehow be easier to track them from ground based optical telescopes or something?
Brad Guzzardo my guess would be because they had no way (gyros, reaction wheels, etc) to keep the sat oriented the same way once in orbit, so just make it round with omnidirectional antennae, and they will be able to receive from it as long as they have a dish below it be on the ground.
Sputnik was pressurised, and Vanguard was spherical to have uniform drag no matter the orientation, allowing for reliable calculation of atmosphere density in its orbit.
Because back then, satellites just tumbled around in space. There is no way to orient it, no remote control, no Gyros, no thrusters, and it couldn't even detect at orientation. So it was designed to function while tumbling through space randomly or in any orientations
The Vanguard rocket to me feels almost no different than an amateur rocket crew with infinite money. They essentially were pioneers in unexplored territories so a success on their 4th attempt using a damn engine from General Electric.
Why were the Vanguard stas (and Sputnik) spherical? That added extra complication to the construction and I can't think of a good reason for it, but I assume there is one.
Petra Oleum A lot depends on the launch point of origin and initial ascent trajectory. The mathematical understanding of orbits has been around since Newton and Kepler, but the actual technology of orbital ascent and insertion developed from the 1950s onward. 3rd stages help a lot with orbital adjustments, and the SST could make modest orbital adjustment maneuvers to insert unpowered or station-keeping objects into the desired orbit without the need for a rocket motor on the payload itself.
I'm watching ten minutes after release & there's already 3.23k views & 323 likes (10% of all views...in 10min) with zero dislikes. Guess I should watch it myself now....& disturb the balance while I'm at it.
A request if you think it would make a good video. A video about the NEO Bennu, and how we could move it might be a very timely article. There's an article about the near Earth object Bennu saying that it will hit the earth in 2135... (Actually it does say there is a 1:2,700 chance) but they do their best to minimize that fact, and goes on to say we are all doomed and it can't be stopped. Then mentions some really outdated techniques for stopping asteriods and says they won't work. A friend of mine posted a link to it, I told him it was bollocks. But I'm not very good at this kind of math, so I'm really hoping you or another channel can show why we are not all doomed and I can just send him the link. Given the time scale I'm imagining a gravity tractor would be the easiest method.
Interestingly while it was the fourth satellite launched, by that time the first one already had it's "viking funeral". The second satellite in orbit had it's viking funeral less than a month later.
Yeah, will be interesting to see how it handles hitting the "firmament" lol. What are your predictions for where it is likely to come down (well its biggest chunk) and what spin do you think the Flat earthers will put on it to explain it? I do admire their "creativity" :)
Mark McCulfor - Yeah I think this could get astronomically funny!Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice Video mentioned below by William Adderholdt (th-cam.com/video/hLPPE3_DVCw/w-d-xo.html ) has some of the funniest dissing of Flatards ive seen in a long time. I mean, how dare Tyson and Nice use this thing called "Logic" and "Scientifically proven"! :)
CALSPHERE 1 and 2 are both operational but no longer used, launched in 1962. LCS 1 is just a hollow metal sphere with a predetermined radar cross section that is still used today to calibrate ground-based systems. It was launched in 1965.
Joel Harris I had no idea that the density of of our atmosphere was significant, although it does make sense. I'm really surprised too, a few kilometers over multiple decades? And objects in slightly lower orbits come back within months? But I guess it's the relatively high apoge(e?) which counts since it spends much more time high up than near the atmosphere.
Yes, the decay rate is really low, I guess it's due to the shape of the probe, I'm not an "aerodynamic expert" but I think a sphere has probably less drag than a cube and other parallelepiped rectangular shaped objects. The height of the apogee can also be a cause, a lot of cubesats are in nearly circular LEO, so they are more subjected to drag during one revolution and it result in a much faster decay.
My uncle launched the ill-fated TV-3 but later launched the successful vanguard-1. Still the oldest artificial satellite, and a great family legacy.
It's kind of funny seeing two engineers attaching a satellite to the top of a rocket - by hand.
'We don't need no stinking clean room'....'Whats a cleanroom?'
Thought the same thing myself :). I wonder if the bacteria survived and mutated into some weird space fungus? Cool!
plenty of satellites of a similar size are still made without cleanrooms. The only benefit of clean rooms (outside of plantery missions where there is a big requirement to avoid contamination) is no dust that could jam moving parts, no moving parts no worries.
Oh, yeah - I was mostly thinking about the size of that satellite. I mean, I know we got nanosatellites now, but it's still an interesting image.
its kinda funny you all eat up this crap like candy
So, the bad news is that the rocket blew up, the good news is that we have excellent sub-orbital telemetry of the launch pad, so I would qualify that as a partial success.
"Recovered 4.5 science"
Actually not far from the truth.
Apollo 13 was a success.
Not in flying to the Moon, but in gathering data and experience with worst case scenarios in space.
Success was there, just the mission profile changed.
@@HappyBeezerStudios Also, they brought the whole crew home safe, when there was a much greater risk of that not happening than in the usual (still quite dangerous) Moon missions.
Tha's what we call a
*f e a t u r e .*
Jeb!
„They launched Exploder 1“
I always love it when scott talks about that particular rocket program
Lol, thats also what I heard. XD
you must be german, those inverted commas right?
I thought that's what he said... 🙃
Reminds me of a sketch on Mr. Show about NASA launching a probe called Exploder 1 to blow up the moon.
So thats why one of the probe core in ksp is called stayputnik ?
That's sounds more like a play on the Russian "Sputnik"
stayputnik was one of the news headlines mocking the first american failure to put their satellite in space. So the KSP probe is named for the news headline which is making fun of an american satellite by making a play on words about the russian satellite.
Alex Siemers wasn't paying attention to the video...
The term "Stayputnik" was also applied to Mercury-Redstone I, a qualification flight that disconnected its umbilicals in the wrong order and shut down the engine after rising about 4 inches.
Let's hope our first probe stays put.
Scott, Sputnik could have also been put in space significantly earlier if Korolev hadn't outwitted his superiors and made №7 the main choice instead of military preferred №9. And history had proven that he was right. The latter one would have became obsolete in short order while the former one is probably the most venerated launch vehicle in existence and is still in use.
But Jebnik was the first man made satellite to orbit, I hit this milestone last night at 4am...
Special EDy man made or kerbal made?
Kerman made.
I meant artificial, not man made. But if I assembled the rocket in the VAB, does that make manmade?
Special EDy yes manmade, but it is currently 2018. You're a little late to the party
bradley morgan But Jebnik is the first mission of "Making History", so I'm only a couple days late.
The Vanguard 1 has 60 years of experience flying safe!
So glad these videos exist
I love this kind of video Scott. Keep them coming. I didn't know about any of this!
The upper stages from Vanguard 1 and 2 are also still in orbit with a slightly higher altitude than the satellites 👍
Thanks Scott, love these videos!
Great video Scott. Love your transition to moderate-highly technical science videos.
I read the official NASA history of the Vanguard Program, and it was actually quite an undertaking. They had to build a space program from scratch, using the Air Force's missile testing station on Cape Canaveral. It was especially interesting how they developed the technology of real-time telemetry using an early computer.
Great video and piece of history! Thank you!
It should be noted that the original plan for the Vanguard mission that was infamously touted as "America's answer to Sputnik" was to test integration of the stages, not to place anything in orbit. Of course pressure was applied to the project management, and they agreed to try orbiting one of the small satellites, alas. I recommend a wonderful 1961 book "Project Vanguard" by Kurt R. Stehling, propulsion engineer on the Vanguard team.
"when you can pressurize a rocket right" you will not go to space today
sry i love the song ok
Don't you mean 'can't '?
th-cam.com/video/YZwZO40r4X0/w-d-xo.html
Can't*
4:04 I love how the nose cone just flops off
I'm Irish, I have a beer in my hand and I'm raising it to Vanguard.
Elvis was singing “ Wear My Ring Around Your Neck” when Vangaurd went into orbit, 1958. It’s still there 65 years later. Elvis’s first
songs are 119 light years out in space and are brand new hits, from earth. Shuttle Discovery, would take you 37 thousand years to travel 1 light year. You have 118 more to go. Got the time? Something to ponder.👍
Damned impressive craft, not only for its longevity but also some pretty impressive technology for its day. Thanks for the history lesson, Scott!
Scott -
Many members of that Vanguard project team .(Naval Research Lab, APL, grad students, Van Allen’s students, etc.)
became the core group for NASA Goddard when NASA was established (Oct. 1, 1958) by President Eisenhower.
If someone with the money and will wanted to, they could recover Vanguard 1. I'm not sure if the U.S still has claims to it or whether it is officially 'space junk', but it would be a pretty awesome museum piece.
It's still US Government property.
Someone call Elon Musk
There's plenty of time, it's estimated to stay up there until somewhere around the year 2200. Heck, by then maybe it'll be a tourist attraction, "come visit Earth, see the oldest human satellite."
KuK137 if your talking about Elon musk the crony capitalist. Then your right I don't like that bastard getting government funds for his company's
I would imagine that would probably piss them off.
Great videos! I learned a lot.
*"OH, WHAT A FLOPNIK!"*
Yeah, that was not in poor taste...
*RIP Hindenburg*
Thanks Scott.
Thank you for acknowledging von Braun for what he was! Cheers!
Excellent
Nice one, Scott!
Amazing video
I've seen a Thor Able at the Space Centre in Leicester! It's a great place, and its tower also has a Blue Streak lower stage, if I remember correctly.
Never knew it was launched on St Patrick's day.
St. Patrick is the patron saint of engineers so maybe they were thought heh why not.
That was great!
Happy St Patrick's day, Scott!
We need to make a space museum for all the old satellites and hardware in orbit. Imagine the kids go on a week trip to space instead of just Washington DC where they can be inspired.
Thank Jah
Could have shown some KSP footage using the US & Soviet Probe Pack. I know it's fully compatible with 1.3, not sure about 1.3.1 or 1.4+ I think the author may have stopped updating it. Hopefully someone picks it up if so, because it's one of the coolest packs out there.
Vanguard rocks bro!
Very interesting! Now, I have to go and see if I can continue Surviving Mars. Thanks, Scott. I'm addicted to that damn game now! :P How are you surviving Mars? Sorry if I missed any further let's play videos. I watched ALL of your Surviving Mars videos and immediately pre-ordered the full package (w/ season pass). I _never_ do that with games anymore! Damn you, Scott! Damn you! (For turning me onto a great game that is sucking my time away like a pipe leak on Mars! :P )
I love how your accent makes the word "explorer" sound a bit like "exploder"
Not green, not Irish, but this Moscow mule has a lime in it so I guess that counts? Awesome video as always Scott!
The phrase "microfiche data set" (@ 0:55) broke my brain -- and I'm actually old enough to have used microfiche quite a bit.
Will you do a video on the falling chinese space station?
Ironic.
If Vanguard 1 has a chance of remaining in orbit for another 40 years, lets have a crowd funded project to build and launch a recovery mission to bring Vanguard home, intact, to commemorate 100 years in orbit.
This would be perfect for material scientists to examine the endurance of the materials and then Vanguard can then be put in exhibit in the Air & Space museum.
the historical presidence would be amazing! I won't be alive in 40 years though.. can't we do it SOON? I believe (and history shows) that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE. If the will is there it WILL happen.
Glass raised. Cheers !!
I gotta feeling that at some point in the future as Vanguard is nearing the end of its time in space and when its getting close to falling back to earth that at that time there gonna wanna attempt to recover the satellite. Case at that point it would be considered a valuable piece of history. I also got a strong feeling that due to the progression of technology there attempt to recover it would be in there capabilities to do so.
Not sure if you read comments on older vids, but could you make video about oldest operational satellite or longest operational satellite, or maybe just list of the best of the best in multiple categories.
*Mod download moving at snail's pace* ah, what the hell, gotta watch some Scott Manley. ^^
Hi Scott, love your vids. An unrelated question. The Project Orion spacecraft concept uses nukes exploding to provide thrust in space. There is no shockwave in space, as you said, how, if at all, can this work?
And exactly 30 years later, I was born!
The first one fell over and sank into the swamp. The second one fell over and broke apart (not into the swamp). But the third one stayed up! :)
Drop everything, and watch.
nice
anyway any more videos about different engines for rockets? maybe like that airflex engines? topic about something like that maybe?
Hey Scott, how small do you think we can make a conventional liquid-fuelled engine? Could they go down to a scale where they might power something that would normally use a solid-fuel model rocket motor?
There seems to be no theoretical reason why you couldn't make one ridiculously small. My first thought was that you'd run into the physics of very small tubes - it is difficult to push a liquid down a feed pipe when the cross-sectional area becomes small relative to the circumference because of surface friction effects - but then you look at things like modern inkjet printers which happily push very precise amounts of liquid down pipes too small to see with the naked eye. How much energy it takes to do so is another question. It is easy to imagine a tiny rocket motor using more energy to run the fuel pumps than it produces in usable thrust.
So good question: disregarding economics, what is likely to be the smallest *practical* liquid fueled rocket?
I've been trying to get into playing through heavily modded KSP so it's reaallyy realistic and, very hard hah. And even on Wikipedia and other websites it's hard to find engine types and stages so I can try to replicate these missions.
When the next surviving mars episode coming out doe?
So why were these early sats all spheriod shaped? Was it so that it would somehow be easier to track them from ground based optical telescopes or something?
Brad Guzzardo my guess would be because they had no way (gyros, reaction wheels, etc) to keep the sat oriented the same way once in orbit, so just make it round with omnidirectional antennae, and they will be able to receive from it as long as they have a dish below it be on the ground.
Sputnik was pressurised, and Vanguard was spherical to have uniform drag no matter the orientation, allowing for reliable calculation of atmosphere density in its orbit.
Because back then, satellites just tumbled around in space. There is no way to orient it, no remote control, no Gyros, no thrusters, and it couldn't even detect at orientation. So it was designed to function while tumbling through space randomly or in any orientations
I have a realistic SaturnV for you to fly a mission with, stage 2 and the LEM are both as “brick flying” as the real thing.
That burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up!
Would they be able to retrieve the satellite, replace the solar panels and/or circuits and send it out again to transmit for another 60 years?
*Vanguard 1*
(resists urge to make Matt Hardy references)
DELIGHTFUL
The Vanguard rocket to me feels almost no different than an amateur rocket crew with infinite money. They essentially were pioneers in unexplored territories so a success on their 4th attempt using a damn engine from General Electric.
So that's where the "Stayputnik" name from KSP comes from
0:38 Stayputnik, hmm that sounds familiar. xD
It would be interesting to recover it someday. I wonder how beat up it is?
0:37 "stayputnik" ... so that's where KSP got the name for that probe.
Why were the Vanguard stas (and Sputnik) spherical?
That added extra complication to the construction and I can't think of a good reason for it, but I assume there is one.
I wanna make a satellite like this in KSP now
So how long did it take before they worked out how to launch satellites to roughly circular orbits?
Petra Oleum
A lot depends on the launch point of origin and initial ascent trajectory. The mathematical understanding of orbits has been around since Newton and Kepler, but the actual technology of orbital ascent and insertion developed from the 1950s onward. 3rd stages help a lot with orbital adjustments, and the SST could make modest orbital adjustment maneuvers to insert unpowered or station-keeping objects into the desired orbit without the need for a rocket motor on the payload itself.
I'm watching ten minutes after release & there's already 3.23k views & 323 likes (10% of all views...in 10min) with zero dislikes. Guess I should watch it myself now....& disturb the balance while I'm at it.
Is there any incentive to recover these old man-made satellites?
It would be cool to put some of them in museums.
I thought you were going to say, "The third launch burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp."
Cool
A request if you think it would make a good video. A video about the NEO Bennu, and how we could move it might be a very timely article.
There's an article about the near Earth object Bennu saying that it will hit the earth in 2135... (Actually it does say there is a 1:2,700 chance) but they do their best to minimize that fact, and goes on to say we are all doomed and it can't be stopped. Then mentions some really outdated techniques for stopping asteriods and says they won't work.
A friend of mine posted a link to it, I told him it was bollocks. But I'm not very good at this kind of math, so I'm really hoping you or another channel can show why we are not all doomed and I can just send him the link. Given the time scale I'm imagining a gravity tractor would be the easiest method.
Hm you should do "Things Kerbal Space Progarm Does't Teach - Orbital Decay". I'm really confused right now
I'm a child of the space age. OK, I was born 3 years after Vanguard...
Is still Vangaurd 1 in contact?
No, its batteries went flat in 1964, but it's still been used as a reference object for various purposes
I wonder whats the Perogee and Apogee today?
Semi-major axis 8,620 kilometers (4,650 nmi)
Eccentricity 0.1844061
Perigee 658.9 kilometers (355.8 nmi)
Apogee 3,839.9 kilometers (2,073.4 nmi)
Inclination 34.2 degrees
Period 132.8 minutes
RAAN 181.84 degrees
Argument of perigee 120.16 degrees
Mean anomaly 10.84 degrees
Mean motion 10.84
Epoch January 6, 2017
wait... so the perigee increased over time? Or is Scott wrong when he says it had a perigee of 654km?
It's not impossible actually.
Such a thin rocket... I guess thats why the second broke up duie to areodynamic stress...
Interestingly while it was the fourth satellite launched, by that time the first one already had it's "viking funeral". The second satellite in orbit had it's viking funeral less than a month later.
4:25
Looks like a Fallout Eyebot.
So they track that little bugger optically you say... I was kinad wondering if you could do that with such small objects without adaptive optics...
Even amateurs can catch it - trick is keeping scope pointed th-cam.com/video/YOUk3TytcwQ/w-d-xo.html
Can you pleas make a new ksp beginer guide wit the new update
Moon wins! Btw, what is the Vanguard perigee now?
Can falcon 9 launch a launcher that can launch the vanguard rocket in orbit in orbit?
Can you do a video about the Chinese Space Station that will fall down soon?
As soon as we get better predictions
Scott Manley thanks Scott! Did I hear it might land in Michigan?
Yeah, will be interesting to see how it handles hitting the "firmament" lol. What are your predictions for where it is likely to come down (well its biggest chunk) and what spin do you think the Flat earthers will put on it to explain it? I do admire their "creativity" :)
Anarchy Antz I hadn't thought about flat earthers, lol this could get funny
Mark McCulfor - Yeah I think this could get astronomically funny!Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice Video mentioned below by William Adderholdt (th-cam.com/video/hLPPE3_DVCw/w-d-xo.html ) has some of the funniest dissing of Flatards ive seen in a long time. I mean, how dare Tyson and Nice use this thing called "Logic" and "Scientifically proven"! :)
Scott, don't forget that being German, von Braun would have pronounced his name "Brown".
4:30 "they launched exploder 1"? That's an ominous name for a rocket.
Which is the oldest that still operates?
CALSPHERE 1 and 2 are both operational but no longer used, launched in 1962. LCS 1 is just a hollow metal sphere with a predetermined radar cross section that is still used today to calibrate ground-based systems. It was launched in 1965.
Here in 2022 October
What about the Black Knight satellite?
The Oldest (publicly known) Satellite in Space -Vanguard 1
Would you say this satellite is OBSOLETE?
Joel Harris OBSOLETE
4:53 if you want to know why its still in orbit
Unfortunately it's evolved into an alien homing beacon for launching an assault on Uranus.
How far has the orbit decayed until now?
Peter Hobelsberger
Injected in a 654 x 3969km orbit, it is now at 649x3841km.
Joel Harris I had no idea that the density of of our atmosphere was significant, although it does make sense. I'm really surprised too, a few kilometers over multiple decades? And objects in slightly lower orbits come back within months? But I guess it's the relatively high apoge(e?) which counts since it spends much more time high up than near the atmosphere.
Yes, the decay rate is really low, I guess it's due to the shape of the probe, I'm not an "aerodynamic expert" but I think a sphere has probably less drag than a cube and other parallelepiped rectangular shaped objects. The height of the apogee can also be a cause, a lot of cubesats are in nearly circular LEO, so they are more subjected to drag during one revolution and it result in a much faster decay.
I own a Vanguard 1 Satellite (Backup I assume)
Hey Scott
but does it still work????