Jonathan's Space Report No. 450 2001 Apr 9, Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Station -------------------- The International Space Station remains in operation, with the Expedition 2 crew of Usachev, Voss and Helms aboard. The next Space Shuttle mission is STS-100, scheduled for Apr 19 using orbiter OV-105 Endeavour. It will carry out International Space Station Flight 6A which will continue the outfitting of the Station. Here is an initial estimate of what's in the STS-100 payload bay; corrections welcome. STS-100 cargo: The JSR guess Est. Mass (kg) Bay 1-2: Orbiter Docking System 1800 and External Airlock 3 EMU spacesuits (S/N unknown) 360? Unknown: Adapter Beam with 100? DCSU switching unit Bay 5?: Spacelab Pallet 1400 with SSRMS (Space Station Remote 1500 Manipulator System) LDA UHF Antenna 56? Bay 8-12?: Rafaello Module (MPLM-2) 4800? MPLM racks and cargo 5400? Unknown Adapter Beam with IMAX Camera 238 Sill: Canadarm RMS 303? 410 ------ Total payload bay cargo 16064 kg Recent Launches --------------- The first Krunichev Proton-M was launched at 0447 UTC on Apr 7. The improved 3-stage Proton launch vehicle, with a new digital flight control system and enhanced first stage engines, delivered its payload section to a suborbital trajectory at 0456 UTC. The Briz-M upper stage then fired to enter a 200 km parking orbit. Although initial Proton-M literature indicated the Briz-M usually uses a further 3 burns to reach geostationary orbit, it appears that only two more burns were used on this occasion: one at around 0540 UTC to enter a 200 x 35800 km GTO, after which the Briz-M toroidal drop tank was probably jettisoned, and one at around 1100 UTC, to circularize the orbit at geostationary altitude. Briz-M reportedly separated from its payload at 1131 UTC. Space Command had not cataloged the three orbiting objects by early Apr 8. Anatoly Zak tells me he has unconfirmed data that the initial parking orbit insertion may have been at 0508 UTC, implying an extremely long Briz-M first burn, which may have partly compensated for the lack of an intermediate burn. The payload was Ekran-M No. 18, a UHF television broadcasting satellite which will be stationed at 99 deg E. The first Ekran-M was launched in 1987 replacing the original model Ekrans which were first launched in 1977, and have provided television service to the Russian Far East since that time. The satellite has a launch mass of around 2100 kg and will replace Ekran-M No. 20 which was launched in 1992 and is operating far beyond its design life. The 2001 Mars Odyssey probe was launched on Apr 7 into solar orbit. Formerly the Mars Surveyor 2001 Orbiter, this is the first spacecraft in the revamped NASA Mars Exploration Program. Built by Lockheed Martin Astronautics (Denver) and JPL, the satellite is similar to Mars Climate Orbiter. It carries a 6-meter boom with a gamma ray spectrometer for remote sensing of Martian surface mineralogy, as well as an infrared imager and a radiation environment monitor. Mars Odyssey (the "2001" seems to be dropped in informal use) will reach Mars orbit in October. The probe has a dry mass of 376 kg and carries 349 kg of propellant. 2001 Mars Odyssey was launched by a Boeing Delta 7925 from Cape Canaveral and entered a 195 x 215 km x 52 (?) deg parking orbit 10 min after launch. After a 12 minute coast the Delta second stage fired again and separated from the third stage, which placed the probe on an Earth escape trajectory. The second stage's final orbit was 177 x 1805 km x 40.0 deg, the lowered inclination probably the result of the depletion burn. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Mar 8 1142 Discovery (STS-102) Shuttle Kennedy LC39B Spaceship 10A Leonardo Module Mar 8 2251 Eurobird ) Ariane 5G Kourou ELA3 Commsat 11A BSAT-2a ) Commsat 11B Mar 18 2233 XM-2 Rock Zenit-3SL Odyssey,Pacific Commsat 12A Apr 7 0447 Ekran-M No. 18 Proton-M Baykonur LC81/24 Commsat Apr 7 1502 2001 Mars Odyssey Delta 7925 Canaveral SLC17A Mars probe 13A Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 1 STS-109 2001 Nov 19 HST SM-3B OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-105 2001 Jul 12 ISS 7A.1 OV-104 Atlantis OPF Bay 3 STS-104 2001 Jun 7 ISS 7A OV-105 Endeavour LC39A STS-100 2001 Apr 19 ISS 6A .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS6 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@cfa.harvard.edu | | USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/jsr.html | | Back issues: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/back | | Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@head-cfa.harvard.edu, (un)subscribe jsr | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'