Owner manual

Orbital Sciences Corporation
45101WarpDrive
•
Dulles,Virginia20166
•
www.orbital.com
©2014OrbitalSciencesCorporation FS001_01_2998
GALEX
MissionPartners
California Institute of Technology
PrincipalInvestigator:Dr.ChrisMartin;scienceoperationsand
data analysis
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Projectmanagementandinstrumentdevelopment
Orbital Sciences Corporation
Spacecraft development, satellite integration and test, launch
vehicle integration, ground data system, mission operations, and
Pegasuslaunchvehicle
University of California Berkeley
Science detectors
Laboratoire d’Astronmie Spatiale (Marseille, France)
Backfocalassemblyoptics
Johns Hopkins University
Science data archive
Yonsei University (Seoul, South Korea)
Science operations and data analysis support
Universal Space Networks (Newport Beach, California)
Ground stations
Specications
Spacecraft
SatelliteMass: 280kg(617lb.)
Redundancy: Single-stringwithselectedredundancy
SolarArrays: FixedGaAs
Power: 290W
Communications: RedundantS-bandreceivers,S-bandand
X-bandtransmitters
Mission Life: 28 months (baseline mission)
Orbit: 690kmaltitudeEarthorbit@29
°
inclination
Status: Baseline mission complete. Decommissioned
in2013aftertenyearsofextended
operations.
Payload
Instrument: 50cmUltravioletTelescope
Wavelength
Coverage: 135-300nm,twobandslargeformat
ultraviolet photon counting detectors
InertialPointer: Slewrate0-2,400arcsec/sec,pointing
knowledge<0.15arcsec
Launch
LaunchVehicle: Pegasus
®
XL
Site: KSC,CapeCanaveral,Florida
Date: April28,2003
The Space Segment
The GALEX satellite represented the space segment of the mission and comprised
theOrbital-suppliedspacecraftbusandtheJPL-suppliedinstrument.The
spacecraftbusprovidedalloftheon-orbitsupportrequiredfortheinstrumentto
obtain mission science data and to transmit it to the ground for distribution and
processing.Theinstrumentconsistedofa50centimeterUVTelescope,itsfocal
plane detectors and supporting electronics.
The Ground Segment
The ground segment comprised Ground Stations, a Mission Operations Center
(MOC) and Science Operations and Data Analysis (SODA). The MOC, located at
Orbital’s Dulles, Virginia campus, was responsible for command and control of the
satellite. SODA, located at the California Institute of Technology, was responsible
for science data processing and science operations mission planning.
GALEX’s ultraviolet surveys produced an unprecedented
database of nearby and distant galaxies.