English: The Third Orbiting Solar Observatory, OSO-3, was launched on 8 March 1967, into a nearly circular orbit of mean altitude 550 km, inclined at 33 degrees with respect to the equatorial plane. The satellite had two principle components, a continuously spinning wheel in which the hard X-ray experiment is mounted with a radial view, and a sail component which was served to acquire the sun during the orbit day. The attitude control system maintained the scan plane orientation to within a few degrees of the sun. The spin-period of the satellite of roughly 1.7 s allowed about 1 cm2/s exposure per revolution to sources on the scan plane. Celestial sources near the ecliptic plane such as Sco X-1 transited the instrument scan plane twice a year. Only real-time data were received from the satellite after the last tape recorder failure on 27 June 1968. The last data transmission occurred 10 November 1969. OSO-3 descended into the atmosphere on 4 April 1982.
Date
Source
NASA's HEASARC: Observatories, Goddard Spaceflight Center
Author
HEASARC Director: Dr. Alan P. Smale HEASARC Associate Director: Dr. Roger Brissenden Responsible NASA Official: Phil Newman Web Curator: Meredith Gibb
Images produced by NASA are usually free of copyright [...]
The instrument flown on OSO-3 obtained extensive observations of solar flares, the diffuse component of cosmic X-rays, and the observation of a single flare episode from Sco X-1.
The gamma-ray instrument registered 621 events attributed to cosmic gamma- rays above 50 MeV. A complete sky survey showed that the celestial distribution of gamma-rays is highly anisotropic, being concentrated along the galactic equator. In addition, an extended region around the galactic center showed a higher measured intensity.
The NASA website hosts a large number of images from the Soviet/Russian space agency, and other non-American space agencies. These are not necessarily in the public domain.
The SOHO (ESA & NASA) joint project implies that all materials created by its probe are copyrighted and require permission for commercial non-educational use. [2]
{{Information |Description={{en|1=The Third Orbiting Solar Observatory, OSO-3, was launched on 8 March 1967, into a nearly circular orbit of mean altitude 550 km, inclined at 33 degrees with respect to the equatorial plane. The satellite had two principle
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