Paper
12 October 2004 Spitzer Space Telescope mission design
Johnny H. Kwok, Mark D. Garcia, Eugene Bonfiglio, Stacia M. Long
Author Affiliations +
Abstract
This paper gives a description of the mission design, launch, orbit, and navigation results for the Spitzer space telescope mission. The Spitzer telescope was launched by the Delta II Heavy launch vehicle into a heliocentric Earth trailing orbit. This orbit is flown for the first time and will be used by several future astronomical missions such as Kepler, SIM, and LISA. This paper describes the launch strategy for a winter versus a summer launch and how it affects communications. It also describes how the solar orbit affects the design and operations of the Observatory. It describes the actual launch timeline, launch vehicle flight performance, and the long term behavior of the as flown orbit. It also provides the orbit knowledge from in-flight navigation data.
© (2004) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Johnny H. Kwok, Mark D. Garcia, Eugene Bonfiglio, and Stacia M. Long "Spitzer Space Telescope mission design", Proc. SPIE 5487, Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Space Telescopes, (12 October 2004); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.551598
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CITATIONS
Cited by 7 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
Space telescopes

Telescopes

Sun

Space operations

Optical instrument design

Antennas

Solar cells

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