Spacecraft Design
The spacecraft is a 1.47 kg (3.2 lb) aluminum sphere 165 mm (6.4 inches) in diameter. It contains a 10 mW, 108 MHz transmitter powered by a mercury battery and a 5 mW, 108.03 MHz transmitter that was powered by six solar cells mounted on the body of the satellite. Six short antennas protrude from the sphere. The transmitters were used primarily for engineering and tracking data, but were also used to determine the total electron content between the satellite and ground stations. Vanguard also carries two thermistors which measured the interior temperature over sixteen days in order to track the effectiveness of the thermal protection. A backup version of Vanguard 1 is on display at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson, Kansas.
Read more about this topic: Vanguard 1
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