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U.S. rocket sent record 29 satellites into space.
17:44
On November 20, 2013 at 01:15 UTC the "Minotaur-1” rocket-carrier was launched from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, the commercial space launch facility located at the southern tip of NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on the Delmarva Peninsula south of Chincoteague, Virginia, USA. The launch was performed by Orbital Sciences Corporation in according to ORS-3 (Operationally Responsive Space-3) program. A privately-owned U.S. rocket orbited a record 29 satellites. The primary purpose was to launch the Space Test Program Satellite-3 known as STPSat-3, as part of the U.S. Air force's Operationally Responsive Space program that had previously flown experimental payloads to space to demonstrate new technologies. The rocket also deployed a record-setting 28 tiny satellites known as cubesats. The cube-shaped satellite measures approximately 3.9x3.9x4.5 inches (10x10x12 centimeters) and has a mass of about 2.0 pounds (0.89 kilograms). In addition to STPSat-3, the following satellites were orbited: 8 Prometheus satellites (1А, 1В, 2А, 2В, 3А, 3В, 4А and 4В); the "Horus” satellite also known as STARE-B (Space-Based Telescopes for Actionable Refinement of Ephemeris-B); the ORSES satellite; 2 ORS Tech satellites (1 and 2); 2 SENSE (Space Environmental NanoSat Experiment) satellites (1 and 2 or А and В); the Н2 satellite (Ho‘oponopono-2); the KYSat-2 (Kentucky Space Consortium-2) satellite; DragonSat-1 (Drexel University Satellite-1); NPS-SCAT (Naval Postgraduate School Solar Cell Array Tester); the Firefly satellite; the "Trailblazer” satellite also known as SPA-1 (Space Plug-and-play Architecture) Trailblazer; ChargerSat; the Lunar satellite also known as Vermont Lunar Cubesat; COPPER (Close Orbiting Propellant Plume and Elemental Recognition) satellite; the Black Knight-1 satellite; SwampSat; CAPE-2 (Cajun Advanced Picosat Experiment-2) satellite; TJ3Sat (Thomas Jefferson Cube Sat); PhoneSat 2.0.
