EURECA Mission
EURECA was an ESA space environment exploration mission designed and developed to be recovered from orbit after completion of the mission and returned to Earth. The main objective of the recovery mission was the post-flight study of environmental effects (meteoroids and space debris impact) and wear-out mechanisms to the spacecraft and its payload.
EURECA was onboard the Atlantis Shuttle (STS-46), launched from Cape Canaveral, USA, on 31 July 1992. The EURECA payload was deployed from the shuttle cargo-bay on 2 August 1992 using the shuttle robotic arm. A burn raising EURECA’s orbit from 420 km to an operational altitude of 508 km was then performed, and the scientific mission began on 7 August 1992. Amongst the crew, was Claude Nicollier, the first Swiss astronaut on his first mission.
EURECA was retrieved by the Endeavour Shuttle during the STS-57 mission (21 June – 1 July 1993) using the Shuttle’s robotic arm, also referred to as Canadarm. EURECA was designed to fly five times with different experiments but the following flights were cancelled. In total. EURECA spent 11 months (336 days) in a sun-pointing orbit.
EURECA Instruments
Fifteen instruments were onboard EURECA amongst which was the SOVA (Solar Constant and Variability) experiment. SOVA was designed and manufactured by a consortium led by the Royal Observatory of Belgium, with PMOD/WRC as a sub-contractor.
Links
SOVA/EURECA on the Earth Observation website
Source and credit: earth.esa.int/, ESA, NASA, PMOD/WRC
