It was launched along with POPPY 2, an ELINT surveillance package, as well as three other satellites, boosted into orbit via a Thor Augmented Delta-Agena D rocket on June 15, 1963.

It was quickly combined, to provide civilian cover (launches being unclassified at that time),[1] with the concurrently conceived United States Naval Research Laboratory's GRAB satellite project,[2] which would collect information on foreign radars and communications installations.

[3] There were five SOLRAD/GRAB missions between 1960 and 1962, with the scientific SOLRAD experiments sharing satellite space with GRAB's intelligence payload.

[6] The mission was successful, despite POPPY 1's elliptical (rather than the planned circular) orbit, and data was returned for 28 months.

Moreover, the Sun was very quiet during the satellite's six weeks of operation, and the four Lyman-Alpha photometers capable of registering X-ray emissions with wavelengths shorter than 8Å reported no results.