TVSAT-2 & Hipparcos

Launch Success

Liftoff Time (GMT)

23:25:53

Tuesday August 8, 1989

Mission Details

Launch Notes

Flight V33.

Hipparcos

Wiki

Hipparcos was a scientific satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in 1989 and operated until 1993. It was the first space experiment devoted to precision astrometry, the accurate measurement of the positions of celestial objects in the sky. This permitted the accurate determination of proper motions and parallaxes of stars, allowing a determination of their distance and tangential velocity. When combined with radial velocity measurements from spectroscopy, this pinpointed all six quantities needed to determine the motion of stars. The resulting Hipparcos Catalogue, a high-precision catalogue of more than 118,200 stars, was published in 1997. The lower-precision Tycho Catalogue of more than a million stars was published at the same time, while the enhanced Tycho-2 Catalogue of 2.5 million stars was published in 2000. Hipparcos' follow-up mission, Gaia, was launched in 2013.

Geostationary Transfer Orbit

1 Payload

210 kilograms

TVSAT-2

Wiki

Like the French TDF, TV-Sat satellites are based on the Aerospatiale Spacebus 300 plattorm and were created by the Eurosatellite consortium of Aerospatiale and Messerschmitt-Broelkow-Blohm (MBB). The technical specifications of TV-Sat are also virtually identical with those of TDF, and both satellites share the same geostationary locale near 19 degrees W. MBB was responsible for the attitude and orbit control systems on both TDF and TV-Sat using the S400 and S10 engines.

Geostationary Transfer Orbit

1 Payload

2,136 kilograms

Rocket

Retired
Ariane 44LP

Active 1988 to 2001

European Space Agency logo

Manufacturer

ESA

Rocket

Diameter: 3.8m

Height: 58.72m

Payload to Orbit

GTO: 4,220 kg

Liftoff Thrust

5,800 Kilonewtons

Stages

3

Strap-ons

4

Launch Site

ELA-2

Guiana Space Centre, French Guiana, France

Fastest Turnaround

16 days

Stats

Ariane 4


5th

Mission

3rd

Mission of 1989

European Space Agency


24th

Mission

6th

Mission of 1989

1989


63rd

Orbital launch attempt