Viking was Sweden's first satellite. It was launched on an Ariane 1 rocket as a piggyback payload together with the French satellite SPOT 1, on February 22, 1986. Operations ended on May 12, 1987. Viking was used to explore plasma processes in the magnetosphere and the ionosphere.

Viking

Mission type	Earth observation
COSPAR ID	1986-019B
SATCAT no.	16614
Start of mission
Launch date	22 February 1986 (1986-02-22)
Rocket	Ariane 1
Launch site	Guiana Space Centre
Entered service	22 February 1986
Orbital parameters
Reference system	Geocentric
Regime	Polar
Semi-major axis	13,550 km (8,420 mi)
Eccentricity	0.0001538
Perigee altitude	801 km (498 mi)
Apogee altitude	13,538 km (8,412 mi)
Inclination	98.7863°
Period	261.56 minutes
Epoch	15 April 2019, 18:22:45[1]

Spacecraft

Space was limited underneath the SPOT 1 satellite, and Viking had to be quite sturdy in order to withstand the stress of launch. The basic shape of the Swedish satellite was a flat octagonal disc, 0.5 metres thick and 1.9 metres across. The mechanical interface of the payload adapter from the Ariane rocket was duplicated on top of Viking. This enabled it to be added to the launch with a minimum of redesign of the SPOT satellite. After SPOT had been released, Viking fired its own rocket engine and was sent into its proper polar orbit.

Mission

Once in orbit, 4 wire segments of 40 metre length each were spooled out in a radial direction from the edge of the spinning satellite disc. Also, 2 stiff rods of 4 metre length were extended in the axial direction. A sensor pod was stationed at the end of each of these, forming three orthogonal pairs. Together they could measure the electric field of the earth in all three dimensions. Stiff booms were also extended for other types of sensors and antennas.^{[citation needed]}

The mission produced a large amount of extremely useful scientific data, and was deemed a great success. An initial discussion of what scientists learned from these measurements, which included "global distribution of magnetosphere-ionosphere interaction; auroral morphology and substorm dynamics; heating and expulsion of ionospheric plasma into the magnetosphere; field aligned acceleration into the ionosphere; and electron and ion wave generation"[2] can be found in the article "Scientific results from the Swedish Viking satellite", 1988 Swedish Inst. of Space Physics, Kiruna. Since then, many other scientific articles have been written using this important data set.^{[citation needed]}

Post mission

After the scientific mission ended, both Viking and the upper stage of the rocket used to launch the satellite became derelict objects that would continue to orbit Earth for many years. As of September 2013^[update], both objects remain in orbit.[3]

References

"VIKING - Sweden's first satellite". Swedish Space Corporation. Archived from the original on 2009-04-11. Retrieved 2008-11-18.^{[not specific enough to verify]}

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Viking satellite.

• Viking information at NSSDC Master Catalog

На других языках

[de] Viking (Satellit)

[ru] Викинг (космический аппарат)