silver (01/03/83)
Came across a bit of history in the book "Out of This World". It seems that during Gemini 10, in 1966, astronaut Michael Collins (the same one that ran the Command Module for Apollo 11) accidentally let go of his Hasselblad camera. It drifted off into earth orbit, where it presumably remains, thereby giving the company its very own Earth satellite. This was quite a coup for them, of course...
karn (01/04/83)
According to my copy of the Satellite Situation Report, there were ten separate objects associated with the launch of Gemini 10 on 18 July 1966: 1966-066A through 1966-066K. The last object decayed 18 April 1967, although most went down within several months of launch. The orbits were so low for most of the manned missions that their lifetimes were always short. In fact, for the earliest manned missions, their orbit lifetimes were deliberately made short in order to cause the manned capsule to re-enter within the span of its life-support system, just in case the retro-rockets failed! The Satellite Situation Report is a good reference to have if you like looking around for interesting bits of trivia like this. It is published several times each year, listing virtually ALL objects in orbit (classified or not - the classified ones just don't have names) their countries of origin, launch date, orbit apogee, perigee and inclination, catalog numbers, etc. The year-end edition reports ALL objects EVER in orbit, listing decayed objects with their decay dates. There's a lot of stuff up there; the last object in my catalog as of Aug 30, 1982 (Cosmos 1402) has a catalog number of 13441, which means it was the 13,441st object in orbit. As of the same date, it lists 4,740 objects still in orbit, while 8,724 have decayed. (Don't ask me why they don't add up...) You can get a FREE copy of the Satellite Situation Report by writing to National Aeronautics and Space Administration Office of Public Affairs Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD 20771 Be prepared to wait a few weeks - after all, it is a branch of the Federal Government. Phil Karn