Delfi-C3 - Launch and Orbit

DELFI-C³ MISSION ELAPSED TIME

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Mission Overview

Launch and Orbit

The Delfi-C3 satellite will be launched at 30 june 2007 from the Indian launch site Sriharikota onboard the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. The satellite will be carried in an Picosatellite Orbital Deployer (X-POD) during a so-called piggyback launch. This means the X-POD will be attached on the outsite of the launcher. In this manner the small Delfi-C3 satellite is able to be launched with a bigger satellite, which makes the launch of such small and light satellites very cheap.

The X-POD is shown to the left, the satellite structure to the left.

The launch site Sriharikota is the main launch site of the Indian Space Research Organisation (www.isro.org). The PSLV is used for launching remote sensing satellites into polar sun-synchronous orbit.

The launch site Sriharikota

The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle

The PSLV will launch the Delfi-C3 satellite into a sun-synchronous orbit. Such a orbit will ensure that the Delfi-C3 satellite will pass over each point on the surface of the earth at the same local time. The characteristics of the orbit are as follows:

orbit	sun-synchronous
altitude	630 km
inclination	98 degrees
period	97 minutes

This orbit was mainly selected so the satellite will fly over the ground station located in Delft. The ground track of the Delfi-C3 will be:

Newsflash

Delfi-C3 2 year anniversary

Today exactly 2 years ago Delfi-C3 was launched from India on a PSLV rocket at 3:53 AM UTC. Today we celebrate the fact that Delfi-C3 has been in orbit and fully operational for 2 continuous years or 10.809 orbits around the Earth. We would like to thank all the radio amateurs for their continued support and telemetry submission. Happy Birthday Delfi-C3!!

Delfi-C3 on Klokhuis

Delfi-C3 was featured on an episode of the Dutch children's program called Klokhuis (meaning 'apple core'). For more info and the episode itself please check our photo weblog.

In the meantime Delfi-C3 is approaching it's 1-year anniversary. The spacecraft is still performing well and returning science data through our own groundstation and the invaluable amateur radio data collection network.

Delfi-C3 back in science mode

On January 29th, after having been in orbit for 9 months and 1 day, Delfi-C3 has been put back in science mode. This decision was reached because of problems with the on-board transponder, which unfortunately prohibits proper operation of the transponder.