Olympus-1
Olympus-1 was a communications satellite built by Astrium (at the time of the construction of the satellite British Aerospace and Matra Marconi Space) and Thales Alenia Space (also at the time Alcatel Espace and Alenia Spazio), along with Fokker and SPAR Aerospace, for the European Space Agency. At the time of its launch on 12 July 1989, it was the largest civilian telecommunications satellite ever built, and sometimes known as "LargeSat" or "L-Sat". The satellite had a series of unfortunate accidents in orbit and went out of service on 11/12 August 1993. The first accident was the loss of ability to articulate the satellite's solar arrays. This was later followed by the loss of an on-board gyro during the height of the Perseid meteor shower. The satellite spun out of control and efforts to stabilise it resulted in the expenditure of the majority of its fuel. Subsequently, it was moved to a GEO disposal orbit and was put out of commission. The Olympus bus was reincarnated as Alphabus, made by the same manufacturers, this time for Inmarsat (Inmarsat-4A F4).
Q149918
communications satellite
Concept
Q499207
Astrium
MEDIA
Q918733
British Aerospace
ORG
Q155896
Fokker
ORG
Q7573536
SPAR Aerospace
UNK
Q42262
European Space Agency
ORG
Q1457566
disposal orbit
Concept
Q1359245
Alphabus
Concept
Q827927
Inmarsat
ORG
Q1028735
Inmarsat-4A F4
MISC
Q596005
Olympus-1
Concept
1989-07-12T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
12 July 1989
DATE
1993-08-12T00:00:00Z^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime
12 August 1993
DATE
-1^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#decimal
-1
NUMBER
+11^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#decimal
11
NUMBER
-4^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#decimal
-4
NUMBER
+4^^http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#decimal
4
NUMBER
instance of
manufacturer
item operated
UTC date of spacecraft launch