The Orbiting Vehicle satellite program arose from a US Air Force initiative, begun in the early 1960s, to reduce the expense of space research.

General Dynamics received a $2 million contract on 13 September 1963 to build a new version of the SPP (called the Atlas Retained Structure (ARS)) that would carry a self-orbiting satellite.

[3]: 418, 420 OV1-12, like the rest of the OV1 satellite series, consisted of a cylindrical experiment housing capped with flattened cones on both ends[5] containing 5000 solar cells producing 22 watts of power.

[3]: 420 The Air Force Weapons Laboratory equipped OV1-12 with a suite of eleven experiments to study the radiation hazard from solar flares.

Called "Flare Activated Radio-biological Observatory" (FARO), the scientific package included a variety of spectrometers and counters to detect electrons and protons as well as a scintillator to measure X-Rays.

These radiation papers, along with ones describing the results of similar devices on OV1-2, energized interest in further study of the radial diffusion of electrons and protons in orbit[7] (i.e. the rate at which they migrate to different heights above the Earth).