Vela (satellite) Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Vela was the name of a group of satellites developed as the Vela Hotel element of Project Vela to monitor compliance with the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty by the Soviet Union and other nuclear capable states. The total number of satellites built was 12 — six of the Vela Hotel design, and six of the Advanced Vela design. The Vela Hotel series was to detect nuclear explosions in space, while the Advanced Vela series was to detect not only nuclear explosions in space but also in the atmosphere. All spacecraft were launched in pairs, either on a Atlas-Agena or Titan III-C boosters, and placed in 63,000 to 70,000 mile orbits, well above the Van Allen radiation belts. The first pair was launched in 1963, three days after the Test Ban Treaty was signed, while the last pair was launched in April 1970. The last satellite to be shut down was Vehicle 9 in 1984, which had been launched in 1969. It had lasted 15 years.Vela started out as a small budget research program in 1959. It ended 26 years later as a successful, cost-effective space system. In the 1970s, the nuclear detection mission was taken over by the Defense Support Program (DSP) system, and in the late 1980s, by the Navstar Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites. The program is now called the Integrated Operational Nuclear Detection System (IONDS).
Some controversy still surrounds the Vela program when in the late 1970s, one of the satellites detected an atmospheric nuclear explosion allegedly in South Africa. Many scientific and policy experts at that time (during the Carter Administration) took pains to debunk the data as a false reading. However, in the mid-1990s, South Africa openly admitted they had conducted an atmospheric nuclear test at that time. The satellite was right!
Includes material from NASA Goddard's Remote Sensing Tutorial
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