Jonathan's Space Report No. 354 1998 Apr 5 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Mir --------------- Columbia rolled out to pad 39B on Mar 23. Launch of mission STS-90 (Neurolab) is planned for Apr 16. Columbia contains the following cargo: Spacelab transfer tunnel Spacelab Long Module, with Neurolab experiments Extended Duration Orbiter pallet Two GAS beams with canisters G-197, G-467, G-772 and one other. The G-772 payload carries Colorado's COLLIDE experiment, which will bang small particles into each other to simulate the formation of planets and rings. The Neurolab mission will carry out life science studies. It seems to be managed by NASA-Johnson at Houston, unlike earlier Spacelab flights which were NASA-Marshall/Huntsville's responsibility. Musabaev and Budarin carried out a spacewalk on Apr 1; the work ran behind schedule and was not completed. The repaired EVA hatch was opened at 1335 UTC and closed at 2015 UTC. The astronauts transferred to the Spektr module and installed handrails near the damaged solar panel. Splinting the panel will have to be done on the next spacewalk. External Tank ET-96, the first aluminium-lithium Super Lightweight Tank, has been mated to the solid rocket boosters for mission STS-91, which will fly in May. Recent Launches --------------- Two more Motorola Iridium satellites were launched Mar 25 by a Chinese CZ-2/SD launch vehicle from Taiyuan Space Center. The two stage CZ-2D places the Smart Dispenser stage in transfer orbit; the SD then fires at apogee and deploys the two satellites before moving to a lower orbit. Five days later, a Boeing Delta 7920-10C placed a further quintet of Iridium payloads in orbit from Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Seven more are waiting for launch on a Proton in Kazakstan. NASA's third Small Explorer, the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE), was successfully launched by an Orbital Pegasus XL on Apr 2. The L-1011 carrier aircraft took off from Vandenberg and dropped the Pegasus over the Pacific Ocean. TRACE was placed in a 602 x 652 km x 97.8 deg sun-synchronous orbit. This makes 11 successful flights out of the last 12 for Pegasus, which had a rocky early history. TRACE, a project led by Lockheed's solar physics group, carries a 30-cm extreme ultraviolet imaging telescope which will study the Sun. The telescope mirrors were made by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. TRACE has an 8.5 arcmin field of view and 1 arcsecond resolution. TRACE is in a sun-synchronous polar orbit around the Earth, chosen so that its plane is at right angles to the line joining Earth and Sun. This means that TRACE can look at the Sun all the time without Earth getting in the way. An orbital plane will normally stay fixed relative to the stars, and so shift relative to the Sun during the Earth's motion around it. The combination of TRACE's orbital height and inclination with the gravitational effects of the Earth's flattened poles cause its orbit to shift by exactly the amount needed to compensate for Earth's orbital motion, keeping TRACE's orbit perpendicular to the Earth-Sun line. Orbital inclinations between about 95 and 110 degrees (depending on orbital height) are needed for a sun-synch orbit. Table of Recent Launches ------------------------ Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Mar 14 2246 Progress M-38 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 15A Mar 16 2132 UHF F/O F8 Atlas II Canaveral SLC36A Comsat 16A Mar 24 0146 SPOT 4 Ariane 40 Kourou ELA2 Imaging 17A Mar 25 1701 Iridium 51 ) CZ-2C/SD Taiyuan Comsat 18A Iridium 61 ) Comsat 18B Mar 30 0602 Iridium 55 Delta 7920 Vandenberg SLC2 Comsat 19A Iridium 57 Comsat 19B Iridium 58 Comsat 19C Iridium 59 Comsat 19D Iridium 60 Comsat 19E Apr 2 0242 TRACE Pegasus XL Vandenberg Solar obs. 20A Current Shuttle Processing Status __________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia LC39B STS-90 Apr 16 OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-91 May 28 OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-88 Sep 17? MLP/SRB/ET/OV stacks MLP1/RSRM66/ET-96 VAB Bay 1 STS-91 MLP2/RSRM65/ET-91/OV-102 LC39B STS-90 MLP3/ .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS6 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@urania.harvard.edu | | USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/jsr.html | | Back issues: ftp://sao-ftp.harvard.edu/pub/jcm/space/news/news.* | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'