cosmos.wikisort.org - Spacecraft

Mission Demonstration Satellite 1 (MDS-1) or Tsubasa (COSPAR 2002-003A, SATCAT 27367) was a Japanese technology test mission. It was launched by the second H-2A on February 4, 2002 from the Tanegashima Space Center. After the launch, MDS-1 was renamed Tsubasa, meaning wings in Japanese.[1] Tsubasa was placed in a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO). It ended its operational phase on 26 February 2003.[2] A similar mission, MDS-2, was cancelled.[3]

The purpose of the mission was to test the performance of commercial off-the-shelf components, including solar batteries, semiconductors and computers.[1][2] MDS-1 also carried instrumentation to observe how changes in the environment as the satellite passed through the Van Allen radiation belts affected the performance of each component. Among these instruments were a dosimeter using radiation-sensitive field effect transistors,[4] a magnetometer, and a device for tracking heavy ions.[5] During the mission, MDS-1 tracked the occurrence of single event upsets (SEU), finding the majority occurred while passing the inner belt during solar maximum and were likely caused by high energy protons.[6] The whole weight of the satellite was 480 kg.[1]

References

---