[JSR] Jonathan's Space Report, No. 662
Jonathan McDowell
jcm at planet4589.org
Sun Jul 15 02:02:52 EDT 2012
Jonathan's Space Report
No. 662 2012 Jul 15 Somerville, MA USA
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International Space Station
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On the ISS, Expedition 32, with astronauts Gennadiy Padalka, Sergey
Revin and Joseph Acaba, is continuing. Soyuz TMA-05M was launched on Jul
15 carrying Yuri Malenchenko (Roskosmos), Sunita Williams (NASA), and
Akihiko Hoshide (JAXA); the spacecraft is scheduled to dock with the
Rassvet module.
Ariane L563
-----------
Arianespace launched flight VA207 with vehicle L563 on Jul 5, carrying
Echostar 17 and Meteosat MSG 3 to geostationary transfer orbit.
Echostar 17 is a 6100 kg Loral-1300E satellite for US domestic Ka-band
broadband data communications. It was developed for Hughes Network
Systems, now a subsidiary of Echostar. On Jul 14 Echostar 17 had reached
a 35429 x 35777 km x 0.0 deg geostationary drift orbit over 120W.
MSG (Meteosat Second Generation) flight 3 will become Meteosat 10 on
reaching operational status. This 10th European geostationary weather
satellite is operated by EUMETSAT, the European Organization for the
Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, which is based in Darmstadt.
MSG 3 was inserted in a 253 x 35761 km x 6.0 deg transfer orbit; orbital
data after Jul 7 are not yet available. According to reports by the
Meteosat LEOP team, apogee firings were performed on Jul 7, 8, 10 and
11, and the SEVIRI cooler cover and SEVIRI baffle cover (10 kg and 4 kg
respectively) were ejected on Jul 13 at 0406 UTC. SEVIRI, the Spinning
Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager, is MSG's main instrument, a
12-channel optical radiometer. The ejected covers from MSG 2 (Meteosat 9)
were cataloged, but those from MSG 1 (Meteosat 8) were not.
Tiangong and Shenzhou
---------------------
Following the departure of Shenzhou 9, the Tiangong 1 spacelab was moved
to a higher orbit. At around the same time, the SZ-9 orbital module (OM)
was jettisoned just before the main SZ-9 spaceship was deorbited. It
appears that US tracking reports on Tiangong 1 between then and July 6,
in a 330 x 338 km orbit were actually for the SZ-9 OM, with the real
Tiangong being mistagged as something else. The OM was finally cataloged
on Jul 6 in a 330 x 338 km orbit, and Tiangong 1 was rediscovered in a 354 x 365 km orbit.
Credit to Bob Christy (http://www.zarya.info) for spotting what's been
going on. The nature of object 38465, probably ejected from Shenzhou 9
early in its mission into a 262 x 377 km orbit, is still unclear; the
slowly decaying debris object may be a docking unit cover.
SES-5
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The SES-5 communications satellite was launched from Baykonur on Jul 9.
The 6007 kg Loral-1300 satellite has Ku and C band communications
payloads for SES and an L-band EGNOS navigation system for the European
Space Agency. SES-5 was formerly Sirius 5; the Nordiska Satellite company
was bought by SES and progressively absorbed by them between 2005 and
2010. Gunter Krebs has reported that SES-5 was renamed Astra 4B in 2010,
but all the current SES press releases use the SES-5 name.
Sirius satellites:
Sirius 1 (Sirius W) Bought 1993 Dec Retired 2003 May
Sirius 2 (Astra 5A) Launch 1997 Nov Retired 2009 Apr
Sirius 3 Launch 1998 Oct In GEO at 51.2E
Sirius 4 (Astra 4A) Launch 2007 Nov In GEO at 4.8E
SES 5 (Astra 4B?) Launch 2012 Jul In transfer orbit
By Jul 13 SES-5 was in a 25947 x 35782 km x 2.5 deg orbit.
QUILL
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The NRO has just declassified a set of documents on the QUILL satellite.
By the late 1980s I realized that the satellite launched on 1964 Dec 21 was
anomalous - it didn't have quite the same orbit as typical missions in
what we now know was the CORONA series - and noted it as FTV 2355 in a
1995 article in QUEST magazine, saying it was 'particularly mysterious'.
Dwayne Day solved the mystery in 2001 (Spaceflight 43,288) and wrote
more about it in 2010 (http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1631/1).
We now know that this satellite was the world's first SAR (synthetic
aperture radar) imaging satellite, flown as a proof of concept and used
to image test targets in the US, proving that space radar could identify
features through cloud cover. It was not followed up for many years -
the civilian NASA Seasat mission in 1978 was the next SAR flight.
QUILL was launched on 1964 Dec 21 at 1909 UTC. The 1477 kg satellite
consisted of a modified Lockheed CORONA/Agena vehicle, with a 0.6 x 4.6m
Goodyear X-band (9.6 GHz) radar antenna panel flush with the body of the
Agena D upper stage, vehicle 2355. The camera system in the payload body
was replaced by the KP-II radar itself and a recorder/transmitter
system. A Thrust Augmented Thor boosted the Agena to a suborbital
trajectory; a fairing over the antenna was ejected and then the Agena
made a 4 minute burn to achieve a 236 x 263 km x 70.1 deg orbit. Data
was radioed to the Vandenberg and New Boston (New Hampshire) ground
stations, and also recorded onto videotape wound into a CORONA-type Mark
VA recovery capsule, SRV 588. On 1964 Dec 23 at 2022 UTC the 139 kg SRV
was ejected over the Kodiak, Alaska tracking station and fired its
TE-236A solid motor to reenter, descending on parachutes for mid-air
recovery at 2056 UTC over the Pacific northeast of Hawaii, at 23 38N 143
45W. The KP-II radar continued operations until Dec 26 when the
spacecraft batteries failed, and the QUILL spacecraft reentered at 1027
UTC on 1965 Jan 11 over the South Atlantic.
2012 Orbital launch summary to date
-----------------------------------
38 launches: (Russia retakes the lead)
Russia China USA Europe India Japan Iran N Korea
11 10 9 4 1 1 1 1(fail)
Erratum
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The preferred English translation of Zhongxing-2A is "Chinasat-2A", not "Chinastar-2A".
Apologies for the slip-up.
Suborbital launches
--------------------
The second flight of Jonathan Cirtain's SUMI (Solar Ultraviolet Magnetograph Investigation)
payload went off (apparently successfully) from White Sands on Jul 5. Launch of Hi-C
(High Resolution Coronal Imager) also went off smoothly on Jul 11.
Table of Recent (orbital) Launches
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Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Jun 1 0523 Intelsat IS-19 Zenit-3SL Odyssey, Pacific Comms 30A
Jun 13 1600 NuStar Pegasus XL L-1011,Kwajalein Astronomy 31A
Jun 16 1037 Shenzhou 9 Chang Zheng 2F Jiuquan Spaceship 32A
Jun 20 1228 USA 236 (NROL-38) Atlas 5 401 Canaveral SLC41 Comms? 33A
Jun 29 1315 USA 237 (NROL-15) Delta 4H Canaveral SLC37B Sigint? 34A
Jul 5 2136 Echostar 17 ) Ariane 5ECA Kourou ELA3 Comms 35A
Meteosat 10 ) Weather 35B
Jul 9 1838 SES-5 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC81/24 Comms 36A
Jul 15 0240 Soyuz TMA-05M Soyuz-FG Baykonur LC1/5 Spaceship 37A
Table of Recent (suborbital) Launches
----------------------------------
Date UT Payload/Flt Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission Apogee/km
Jun 7 1739 RV Topol' Kapustin Yar Op Test 1000?
Jun 21 1040 NASA 41.101UO Terrier Orion Wallops I. Education 117
Jun 22 1918 SHEFEX II VS-40 Andoya Hypersonic 177
Jun 23 1930 NASA 36.286UE Black Brant 9 White Sands Solar 300?
Jun 27 0915 FTM-18 Target Castor 4B? Kauai Target 100?
Jun 27 0920? FTM-18 KV SM-3 Block IB USS Lake Erie Intercept 100?
Jul 3 Shahab RV Shahab 1 ?, Iran Exercise 100?
Jul 3 Shahab RV Shahab 2 ?, Iran Exercise 100?
Jul 3 Shahab RV Shahab 3 ?, Iran Exercise 150?
Jul 5 1850 NASA 36.284NS Black Brant 9 White Sands Solar 275?
Jul 11 1850 NASA 36.272NS Black Brant 9 White Sands Solar 268
.-------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 |
| Somerville MA 02143 | inter : planet4589 at gmail |
| USA | jcm at cfa.harvard.edu |
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