Prospero: Britain's First and Only Self-Launched Satellite

On October 28th in Science History, one significant event took place in 1971 when the United Kingdom launched the satellite Prospero into orbit. This marked the first and only time a British satellite was launched using a British rocket, making it a milestone in the country's space exploration efforts.

The Prospero satellite, also known as X-3, was designed and built by the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough, England. Its primary mission was to test the performance of a new type of solid-state X-ray detector in space. The satellite also carried a micrometeoroid detector and a prototype resistojet thruster for attitude control.

The launch vehicle used for this historic mission was the Black Arrow, a three-stage rocket developed by the British company Saunders-Roe. The Black Arrow was designed to be a low-cost, lightweight rocket capable of placing small satellites into low Earth orbit. The rocket stood 13 meters tall and had a diameter of 2 meters, with a launch mass of around 18 tons.

On the day of the launch, the Black Arrow rocket carrying Prospero lifted off from the Woomera Test Range in South Australia at 04:09 UTC. The launch was a success, and Prospero was placed into an elliptical orbit with an apogee of 1,594 kilometers and a perigee of 534 kilometers. The satellite had an orbital inclination of 82 degrees and completed one orbit around the Earth every 105 minutes.

Prospero successfully completed its mission, providing valuable data on the performance of its X-ray detector and micrometeoroid detector. The satellite remained operational for several years before its batteries were exhausted, and it became inactive. As of 2021, Prospero is still in orbit and is expected to remain there for many decades to come.

Despite the success of the Prospero mission, the British government decided to abandon its national space program shortly after the launch due to financial constraints. This decision meant that the Black Arrow rocket and the expertise gained from the Prospero project were not further developed, and the United Kingdom would not launch another satellite using its own rocket for decades.

The launch of Prospero on October 28th, 1971, remains a significant achievement in British space exploration history. It demonstrated the country's capability to develop and launch its own satellites and rockets, even though the program was short-lived. Today, the Prospero satellite serves as a reminder of the United Kingdom's early contributions to space science and technology.


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