27640 - CORIOLIS

CORIOLIS is an American (DoD) spacecraft that was launched by a Titan 2 rocket from Vandenberg AFB at 14:19 UT on 2003 January 6. The initial orbital parameters were period 101.6 min, apogee 842 km, perigee 822 km, and inclination 98.7 deg.

The 395-kg, 1,174-W, 3.0-m diameter, 6.9-m high, triaxially-stabilized spacecraft carried 82 kg of fuel and 340 kg of instruments. The two instruments are WindSat to monitor ocean surface winds, and SMEI to image Solar Mass Ejections (SME). Data are stored onboard and downlinked to dedicated ground stations in x-band.

WindSat is a US Navy (NRL) multifrequency, 305-kg polarimetric radiometer that will monitor the surface winds over the oceans. The radiometer operates on a number of frequencies in the range 6.8-37.0 GHz. Its antenna will spin about the yaw axis at 30 rpm.

SMEI is a major payload and carries three optical cameras to photograph the Thompson-scattered light from ejected coronal masses (CMEs). The total coverage during each orbit is the hemispherical sky around the Sun. Each camera has a well-baffled field of view of 3 deg x 60 deg, with the baffle cutting out the stray light by 10 orders of magnitude. The CCD imager provides a resolution of 0 .2 deg. The major but stable and smooth component of the image is the Zodiacal light which is about a thousand times stronger than the superposed, structured and variable light from the CMEs. Differential photometry is invoked to extract the CME component. More details of this photometry is available in The solar mass ejection imager, Advances in Space Research, Vol. 11, pp 377-381, 1991. SMEI can provide warnings of the Earth-directed CMEs three days in advance.

Facts in Brief

Launch Date: 2003-01-06
Launch Vehicle: Titan II
Launch Site: Vandenberg AFB, United States
Nominal Power: 1174.0 W