Ariel 6 to seek rays

Press, 18 April 1979, Page 18

Ariel 6 to seek rays

By

JOHN WEBB,

L.P.S.

"Science Correspondent Britain’s latest scientific satellite, Ariel 6, will be launched from the N.A.S.A. flight centre in Virginia, on May 24. It was built for the United Kingdom Science Research Council at the Marconi space laboratories

in Portsmouth, southern England. After being launched by a Scout rocket, the 150 kg satellite will orbit the Earth every 96 minutes at an altitude of 625 kilometres. It will have a working life of at least two years. Ariel Six, the last of a

series that first went into space in 1962, will be controlled by a southern England tracking station from the S.R.C. centre at Appleton Laboratory at Slough, near London. The total cost of the Ariel 6 programme will be about S2OM which includes SBM for the actual satellite. Although there is no back-up craft, two engineering models have been built to test the many systems on the satellite. The three main scientific experiments to be carried into space are a cosmic ray detector and two X-ray experiments. In addition, two experiments will investigate the performance in orbit of new types of solar cells and of metal oxide semi-con-ductor devices.

The cosmic ray and X-ray experiments, devised by four British universities, will provide a valuable insight into high energy astrophysics such as quasars, radio galaxies, supernovas and pulsars.

The two X-ray telescopes will also search for black holes in the galaxy and study regions with temperatures above one million degrees. The Marconi Company has now contributed flight components to 26 satellites and is working on 21 more. As well as being the main contractor for Ariel 6 the company also worked on Ariels 2,3, 4, and 5. Ariel 5, launched late in 1974, is still working.