SOLRAD 2 was launched along with Transit 3A atop a Thor-Ablestar rocket on 30 November 1960, but both satellites failed to reach orbit when the booster flew off course and was destroyed, raining debris over Cuba, which prompted official protests from the Cuban government.

The U.S. Air Force began a program of cataloging the rough location and individual operating frequencies of these radars, using electronic reconnaissance aircraft flying off the borders of the Soviet Union.

Some experiments were carried out using radio telescopes looking for serendipitous Soviet radar reflections off the Moon, but this proved an inadequate solution to the problem.

The U.S. Navy had wanted to determine the role of solar flares in radio communications disruptions [7]: 300  and the level of hazard to satellites and astronauts posed by ultraviolet and X-ray radiation.

[12] On 5 May 1960, just four days after the downing of Gary Powers' U-2 flight over the Soviet Union highlighted the vulnerability of aircraft-based surveillance, President Eisenhower approved the launch of an operational SOLRAD satellite.

[15] As with SOLRAD 1, permanent magnets were installed to deflect charged particles from the detector windows to address the saturation issue that had impacted the Vanguard 3 mission.

[9]: 64–65 The satellite's GRAB surveillance equipment was designed to detect Soviet air defense radars broadcasting on the S-band (1,550–3,900 MHz),[13]: 29, 32  over a circular area 6,500 km (4,000 mi) in diameter beneath it.

As it traveled over the Soviet Union, the satellite would detect the pulses from the missile radars and immediately re-broadcast them to American ground stations within range, which would record the signals and send them to the NRL for analysis.

[3]: 7  Data received on the ground was recorded on magnetic tape and couriered back to the NRL, where it was evaluated, duplicated, and forwarded to the National Security Agency (NSA) at Army Fort Meade, Maryland, and the Strategic Air Command (SAC) at Offut Air Force Base Omaha, Nebraska, for analysis and processing.

[17] Like most early automatic spacecraft, SOLRAD 2, though spin stabilized,[7]: 300  lacked active attitude control systems and thus scanned the whole sky without focusing on a particular source.

[9]: 13  So that scientists could properly interpret the source of the X-rays detected by SOLRAD 2, the spacecraft carried a vacuum photocell to determine when the Sun was striking its photometers and the angle at which sunlight hit them.

[9]: 64 In November 1960, Votaw and his 14-man team drove the technical components for the SOLRAD 2 launch (loaded in the trunks of their own cars) from NRL headquarters in Washington, D.C. to Cape Canaveral, flying having been ruled out due to the recent rash of skyjackings to Cuba.

[19] As a result of the rocket's destruction, fragments fell over Cuba's Oriente Province at the eastern end of the island, northwest of the U.S. Navy's Guantanamo Bay base.

According to a 1988 Chinese document, some of the recovered debris was sold to the People's Republic of China and used in aid of the design of the second stage of the CSS-4 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).