WRESAT
Sign in to saveWRESAT, or Weapons Research Establishment Satellite, was Australia's first satellite. It was named after its designer, the Weapons Research Establishment. WRESAT was launched on 29 November 1967 using a modified American Redstone rocket with two upper stages, known as a Sparta, from the Woomera Test Range in South Australia. The Sparta (left over from the joint Australian-US-UK Sparta program) was donated by the United States.
Key facts
- Spaceflight.name
- WRESAT
- Spaceflight.image
- Redstone Sparta CC-2029 1.jpg
- Spaceflight.image_caption
- Redstone Sparta rocket with WRESAT mounted on top (the black cone), November, 1967
- Spaceflight.mission_duration
- Data: 73 orbitsTotal: 642 orbitsTotal: ~42 days
- Spaceflight.manufacturer
- Weapons Research Establishment
- Spaceflight.launch_mass
- (with the third stage)
- Spaceflight.launch_date
- UTC
- Spaceflight.launch_rocket
- Sparta
- Spaceflight.launch_site
- Woomera LA-8
- Spaceflight.decay_date
- 10 January 1968
- Spaceflight.orbit_reference
- Geocentric
- Spaceflight.orbit_regime
- Low Earth
- Spaceflight.orbit_periapsis
- 169 km
- Spaceflight.orbit_apoapsis
- 1245 km
- Spaceflight.orbit_inclination
- 83.3°
- Spaceflight.orbit_period
- 99 minutes
- Spaceflight.apsis
- gee
via Wikipedia infobox
~2 min read
Encyclopedic overview
4 sectionsContents
- See also
- References
- Literature
- External links
WRESAT, or Weapons Research Establishment Satellite, was Australia's first satellite. It was named after its designer, the Weapons Research Establishment. WRESAT was launched on 29 November 1967 using a modified American Redstone rocket with two upper stages, known as a Sparta, from the Woomera Test Range in South Australia. The Sparta (left over from the joint Australian-US-UK Sparta program) was donated by the United States.
After this launch, Australia became the seventh nation to have a satellite and the third nation to launch from its own territory, after the Soviet Union and the United States (the UK's, Canada's and Italy's satellites were also launched on American rockets, unlike the French Astérix, which launched on an indigenous rocket out of Algeria).
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “WRESAT” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.