Olympus-1

Olympus-1 was a communications satellite built by British Aerospace for the European Space Agency. At the time of its launch on 12 July 1989, it was the largest civilian telecomms satellite ever built, and sometimes known as "LargeSat" or "L-Sat". The satellite had a series of unfortunate accidents in orbit and went out of service on 11/12 August 1993. The first accident was the loss of ability to articulate the satellite's solar arrays. This was later followed by the loss of an onboard gyro during the height of the Perseid meteor shower. The satellite spun out of control and efforts to stabilize it resulted in the expenditure of the majority of its fuel. Subsequently, it was moved to a GEO disposal orbit and was put out of commission.

References

• "The sad story of Olympus 1"
• "The Olympus failure", ESA press release, 26 August 1993
• "OLYMPUS", NASA Satellite Communications Systems and Technology, July 1993