Small Satellite Home Page - Established 1995

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Launching on Taurus

The TAURUS launcher has been developed as a dedicated launcher for small satellites by Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC), and was sponsored by ARPA as its standard small launch vehicle. It can place 620kg into LEO, and 430kg into GTO, although a number of add-on boosters can increase that to over 500kg. A dual payload adaptor is available, and was used on the GFO launch. The Taurus employs technology proven on the OSC Pegasus launcher, using the same three stages as well as an additional fourth solid stage. It will eventually be upgraded to an -XL version.

Capacity

Launcher Capacity (kg) Orbit
Taurus 620
430		 LEO
GTO
Taurus-XL - -
 

Launch history

# date Type Payload Orbit Comments
1 13 Mar 94 ARPA Step-0 (TAOS)
Darpasat		 537x555km, 105 deg
2 10 Feb 98 GFO
ORBCOMM
ORBCOMM		 779x881, 108 deg An active shock isolation system was flown to protect GFO
3 3 Oct 98 ARPA STEX 685km, 85deg (A 700kg satellite)
4 22Dec99 Kompsat
Acrimsat		 685km SSO

Success rate: 100% (4/4)

Expected future launches

# date type payload orbit comments

More:

[Taurus at OSC][Taurus factsheet at AFMC][AVI of first taurus launch]
 

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