Kosmos 23

Kosmos 23 (Russian: Космос 23 meaning Cosmos 23), also known as Omega No.2, was a satellite which was launched by the Soviet Union in 1963. It was an Omega satellite, derived from the Dnepropetrovsk Sputnik series. It was a 347 kilograms (765 lb) spacecraft, which was built by the Yuzhnoye Design Office, and was used to conduct experiments with the use of gyroscopes to control spacecraft, for VNIIEM.

Spacecraft

Kosmos 23 was a test platform orbited by the Soviet Union for the purpose of evaluating electrotechnical systems later used to ensure the orientation and stabilization of weather satellites. Like its predecessor, Kosmos 14, the satellite was in the form of a cylinder, with two hemispherical ends, and was 1.8 metres (5 ft 11 in) long and 1.2 metres (3 ft 11 in) in diameter. Tests were made of power supplies that used solar cell batteries, and equipment on board monitored the operation of automatic devices that controlled the solar and chemical batteries. The control stabilization system consisted of flywheels driven by electric motors. The kinetic energy of the flywheels was dampened by using electromagnets that produced torque by interacting with the Earth's magnetic field. This system provided three-axis stabilization and oriented the satellite to Earth. The satellite communicated via a "Mayak" radio transmitter operating at 20 MHz. Kosmos 23 may have also carried the first Soviet meteorological scanning infrared radiometer to obtain crude nighttime pictures of the cloud cover of the Earth.