Jonathan's Space Report No. 669 2012 Oct 24 Somerville, MA USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- International Space Station ---------------------------- Expedition 33 continues with commander Suni Williams, FE-4 Yuriy Malenchenko and FE-6 Aki Hoshide; Soyuz TMA-06M (factory no. 707, ISS flight 32S) was launched on Oct 23 with Oleg Novitskiy, Yevgeniy Terelkin and Kevin Ford; the crew, callsign 'Kazbek', will become part of Ex-33 when they arrive at the Station. SpaceX's Dragon CRS-1 cargo ship reached the ISS on Oct 10 and was captured by the SSRMS arm at 1056 UTC. Berthing at the Harmony module was completed at 1303 UTC. The five cubesats ejected from the JEM on Oct 4 have been cataloged as 1998-067CN to 1998-067CS; Mike Rupprecht DK3WN has identified three of them so far using their radio signals. The cubesats went into space on the 2012-038 (HTV-3) launch but USSTRATCOM, to whom the World Data Center at GSFC has delegated the naming process, has elected to label all ISS-associated objects with the Zarya module's launch number. The Orbcomm OG2-1 satellite reentered at 0619 UTC on Oct 10 after 2 days in space, probably over the NE Pacific west of Vancouver. An Orbcomm press release states that they were able to test out the satellite's systems before the reentry. The Falcon 9 second stage has also reentered, and the three debris objects will probably come down in the next day or two. The ISS orbit was raised slightly on Oct 17 using the Zvezda module engines. Galileo ------- The IOV 3 and 4 in-orbit validation satellites for the Galileo navigation system, Europe's analog to GPS, were orbited by a Soyuz/Fregat from the Centre Spatial Guyanais on Oct 12. The two satellites have been given the nicknames David and Sif in honor of two young competition winners, Mr. David Markarjanc (b.2001) of the Czech Republic and Ms. Sif Skov Christensen (b.2002) of Denmark. The Fregat-MT No. 1031 upper stage inserted the stack in a 202 x 23248 km x 56.0 deg transfer orbit; after a second burn at 2149 UTC the two satellites were ejected into circular orbit. The Soyuz-ST-B (Soyuz-2-1b) third stage was on a suborbital trajectory and reentered over the Atlantic at about 1832 UTC. On Oct 23 IOV-3 was in a 23215 x 23232 km x 55.3 deg orbit. SJ-9 ---- On Oct 14 China launched two technology satellites, SJ-9A and SJ-9B (Shi Jian jiu hao A/B weixing) using a CZ-2C launch vehicle with an SMA solid motor upper stage. The CZ-2C second stage ended up in a 260 x 674 km x 98.0 deg transfer orbit; the satellites are in a 623 x 650 km x 98.0 deg, 1029LTDN sun-synchronous orbit together with a small dual payload adapter. The SMA stage seems to have made a pair of depletion burns to a 363 x 607 km x 98.1 deg disposal orbit. Two of the four second stage motor separation covers have so far been cataloged, in 260 x 890 km orbits. The SJ-9 satellites carry technical experiments and will perform formation flying exercises. They are under the control of the Zhonggou ziyuan weixing yingyong zhongxin (China Resources Satellite Applications Center). On Oct 19 SJ-9A began maneuvers, lowering its orbit to 619 x 644 km and then returning to a 623 x 650 km orbit on Oct 22-23. Ekspress/Telkom -------------- The upper stage from the failed Ekspress/Telkom launch, Briz-M No. 99532 (catalog 38746), disintegrated on Oct 16, presumably when residual fuel and oxidizer came into contact, and generated an as-yet-unknown quantity of orbital debris. The stage was in a 263 x 5012 km x 49.9 deg orbit. None of the debris has yet been cataloged. IS-23 ----- Intelsat's IS-23 satellite, an Orbital Star-2.4 model, was launched on Oct 14 by a Proton/Briz-M from Baykonur. The satellite will provide Ku and C band communications services for the Americas, Europe and Africa from 53W. This is the first Star-2 class satellite to be directly inserted into geosynchronous orbit by its launch vehicle rather than using liquid apogee burns from transfer orbit. On Oct 19 the satellite was in a 25-hour, 36916 x 37239 km x 0.1 deg drift orbit; by Oct 22 IS-23 had braked to a 24-hour, 35780 x 35948 km x 0.1 deg near-synchronous orbit drifting west over 50 deg W. Launch Vehicle Statistics -------------------------- The practice, of which I and others have long been guilty, of evaluating launch vehicle reliability based on a simple pass/fail value for each launch is rather a blunt instrument, as the recent Falcon 9 launch shows. I have revised my launch tables (http://planet4589.org/space/lvdb/) to include an attempt at reasonably objective fractional success values for marginal cases. For pass/fail purposes I consider a score of 0.75 or less to be a failure; one could argue for lowering that boundary a little bit. For launches with a single payload, or multiple equal-priority payloads, I give: - full success 1.00 - orbit usable but not nominal 0.75 - orbit but not a usable one 0.40 - payload failed to separate 0.25 (even if good orbit) - orbit not reached 0.00 (or reentry after circa 1 orbit) For missions with primary (P) and secondary (S) payloads, a rough scaling to give the P 3 times the weight of S - - full success 1.00 - S off-nominal orbit 0.95 - S unusable orbit 0.85 - S failed to sep 0.75 - P off-nominal orbit 0.55 - P unusable orbit 0.30 - P failed to separate 0.10 There's still some subjectivity here, and I've allowed myself to assign intermediate values, e.g. when an orbit is only slightly off-nominal. Now obviously scores of 0.40 or less are going to mean an unhappy customer, but I think it's still worth distinguishing from complete failure to orbit a it usually indicates a vehicle which is 'close' to working in contrast to some vehicles which never make it beyond first or second stage burn (I'm looking at you, North Korea...). For Earth escape missions stranded in LEO, I've kept a 0 (complete failure) score. Here are the proposed scores assigned so far that differ from 0.0 and 1.0: 0.25 96-061 Pegasus 0.40 63-021 Thor Agena; 67-032 Proton; 76-062,76-088, 80-031, 86-075,90-055 Molniya, 78-119, 95-052 Kosmos, 84-120, 04-052 Tsiklon, 91-051 Pegasus, 95-U01 Mu-3S-II, 96-048 CZ-3, 80-043 Atlas, 99-017, 99-023 Titan, 99-024 Delta 3, 06-006, 08-011, 11-045, 12-044 Proton/Briz, 11-005 Rokot 0.45 04-050 Delta 4H (primary payload medium-bad orbit, secondary failed to orbit) 0.50 01-029 Ariane 5/V142 0.75 97-057 PSLV, 97-066 Ariane 502, 07-027 Atlas V/NROL-30, 09-029 Soyuz/Meridian 0.80 00-048 Delta 3, 01-015 GSLV (somewhat off-nominal orbit) 0.85 12-054 Falcon 9 (primary perfect, secondary unusable) I haven't done a throrough scrub of the database, particularly the older launches - let me know what you think. Note that I don't count PAM and IUS payloads on Shuttle as part of the launch vehicle. There's a whole other discussion to be had about measuring each stage instead of the LV as a whole, and measuring upper stage and apogee motor reliability - but that is not this discussion: the question of integrated launch vehicle reliability comes up often enough to be worth doing better. Orbital Launch Stats 2012 to Date --------------------------------- Total 60 attempts: Russia 18, US 14, China 14, France/ESA 7, India 2, Japan 2, Iran 1 + 1 fail, North Korea 1 fail Sea Launch counted as US, Soyuz/CSG counted as France, so for country of LV manufacture it's Russia/Ukraine 21, China 14, US 12, Europe 6, India 2, Japan 2, Iran 2, NK 1. Orbital's Antares and South Korea's Naro will make it even tougher to construct meaningful nation-based statistics, since they have Russian-built first stages. Table of Recent (orbital) Launches ---------------------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Oct 4 1210 GPS SVN65 Delta 4M+(4,2) Canaveral SLC37B Navsat 53A Oct 4 1437 RAIKO ) ISS Kibo, LEO Tech 98-067CN We Wish ) Tech 98-067CS Oct 4 1544 F-1 ) ISS Kibo, LEO Tech 98-067CR Niwaka ) Tech 98-067CP TechEdSat) Tech 98-067CQ Oct 8 0035 Dragon CRS-1 ) Falcon 9 Canaveral SLC40 Cargo 54A Orbcomm OG2-1) Comms 54B Oct 12 1815 Galileo IOV-3 ) Soyuz ST-B Kourou ELS Navsat 55A Galileo IOV-4 ) Navsat 55B Oct 14 0325 Shi Jian 9 A ) Chang Zheng 2C Taiyuan Tech 56A Shi Jian 9 B ) Tech 56B Oct 14 0837 Intelsat IS-23 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC81/24 Comms 57A Oct 23 1051 Soyuz TMA-06M Soyuz-FG Baykonur LC31 Spaceship 58A Table of Recent (suborbital) Launches ---------------------------------- Date UT Payload/Flt Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission Apogee/km Oct 4 0337 RV Prithvi 2 Chandipur Op.Test 100? Oct 5 0555 RV Dhanush Ship, Chandipur Op.Test 100? Oct 19 RV Volna K-433 sub, S. Okhotsk Op.Test 1000? Oct 19 0912 RV Topol Plesetsk Op.Test 1000? .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Somerville MA 02143 | inter : planet4589 at gmail | | USA | jcm@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://www.planet4589.org/jsr.html | | Back issues: http://www.planet4589.org/space/jsr/back | | Subscribe/unsub: http://www.planet4589.org/mailman/listinfo/jsr | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'