E1P was a re-flight mission of Explorer 1, the first American satellite, using modern technology including a Geiger tube donated by James Van Allen. The name of the satellite was also adopted from Van Allen, who referred to the satellite as Explorer-1 Prime prior to his death in 2006.
It was originally intended to be launched in 2008 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the launch of Explorer 1. If it had been successful, E1P would have been Montana's first successful launch of a satellite after the loss of SSEL's MEROPE[7] in 2006.[1]
The Michigan Exploration Laboratory (MXL) suspects that the M-Cubed CubeSat, a joint project run by MXL and JPL, became magnetically conjoined to Explorer-1 Prime Unit 2, a second CubeSat released at the same time, via strong onboard magnets used for passive attitude control (see: Magnetorquer), after deploying on October 28, 2011. This is the first non-destructive latching of two satellites.[10]
^Space Science and Engineering Laboratory (SSEL). "Explorer-1 PRIME". Retrieved 29 July 2024.
^Schwartz, Patrick C. "Launches". Mission Set Database. NASA GSFC. Archived from the original on 20 March 2009. Retrieved 29 July 2024. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
^Krebs, Gunter D. (14 January 2023). "Glory". Gunter's Space Page. Retrieved 29 July 2024.
^Jacobs, Danny (26 September 2008). "We get press-release". Montana State University. Archived from the original on 5 April 2010. Retrieved 30 July 2024.
^"MCubed-2". National Space Flight Data Center. 9 July 2014. Retrieved 9 July 2014. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
Launches are separated by dots ( • ), payloads by commas ( , ), multiple names for the same satellite by slashes ( / ). Crewed flights are underlined. Launch failures are marked with the † sign. Payloads deployed from other spacecraft are (enclosed in parentheses).
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