Before its orbit decayed, causing the satellite to reenter on 8 November 1968, OV1-15 profoundly improved our knowledge of the upper atmosphere, proving that air density increased with solar activity rather than decreasing, as had been the prevailing theory to that time.

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.

OV1-13 and OV1-14 were the first to be launched on a decommissioned Atlas F.[3]: 418, 420 OV1-15, 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.

[2] OV1-15's primary mission was to measure the effects of geogmagnetic storms caused by the sun on atmospheric density, composition, and temperature.

Theoretical models had suggested that air density would decrease with increased solar activity (the opposite of what the two OV1 satellites ultimately discovered)[6] OV1-15's instrument package included a microphone density gauge, an ion gauge, mass spectrometers, energetic particle detectors, solar X ray and UV flux monitors, an ionospheric monitor, and a triaxial accelerometer.

[2] This last device, dubbed "MESA", was specifically built for OV1-15 and OV1-16 by Bell Aerospace[7] to measure atmospheric drag on the spacecraft as its orbit decayed.