Jun 2 1979
From The Space Library
NASA launched UK 6 from WFC at 7:26 p.m. EDT on a Scout into an orbit with 656 kilometer apogee, 607-kilometer perigee, 55° inclination, and 97.5-minute period. Under the terms of a contract of March 16, 1976, between NASA and the U.K. Science Research Council, the launch was the second on a fully reimbursable basis, at an estimated cost to the United Kingdom of $4,956,733, including booster, support services, tracking and data acquisition, and use of U.S. facilities.
The British-built spacecraft, weighing 340.6 pounds carried an experiment to measure the charge and energy spectra of galactic cosmic rays, and two X-ray astronomy experiments on structure and position of low-energy sources and on fluctuations in X-ray emission from low galactic latitude sources. UK 6 would carry two experiments for the Royal Aircraft Establishment to study performance in orbit of new types of solar cell and the susceptibility of metaloxide semiconductor devices to radiation in a space environment. NASA judged the mission successful as of October 1979. (NASA Release 79-61, 79-78; NASA MOR M-490-30179-02 [prelaunch] May 14/79, [postlaunch] Oct 18/79)
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