Jonathan's Space Report
No. 360 1998 May 17 Cambridge, MA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shuttle and Mir
---------------
The next Shuttle mission is STS-91; orbiter OV-103 Discovery will dock
with Mir to pick up Andrew Thomas, the final NASA resident on the
station, and allow an inspection visit by Russian Shuttle-Mir program
director Valeriy Ryumin. Charles Precourt and Dominic Gorie will be
commander and pilot, with payload commander Franklin Chang-Diaz and
mission specialists Wendy Lawrence and Janet Kavandi. Dr. Chang-Diaz, a
member of the 1980 group of astronauts, will be making his sixth space
flight, equalling the record set by John Young and Story Musgrave.
Ryumin has been involved in the design and development of all of the DOS
orbital stations from Salyut to Mir, and made three flights in the
Salyut-6 program in 1977-1980, becoming at that time the spaceflight
duration record holder.
Russia launched the Progress 7K-TGM (11F615A55) No. 238 cargo ship from
Baykonur on May 14. Progress spacecraft 238 was renamed Progress M-39
after launch. It docked with Mir at 2351 UTC on May 16, bringing
supplies and scientific experiments to the station. Progress M-38
undocked May 15 at 1844 UTC, freeing up the docking port on the Kvant
module for the new cargo ship.
Recent Launches
---------------
The NOAA K weather satellite was launched on May 13 from Vandenberg, and
renamed NOAA 15 on reaching orbit. NOAA K is an Advanced Tiros N class
weather satellite built by Lockheed Martin/East Windsor for the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Polar Orbiting Environmental
Satellite (POES) program. NOAA K carries a new microwave sensor as well
as the usual complement of optical/near-infrared radiometers and imagers
and the SARSAT search and rescue package. It was the first NOAA launch
to use the Titan 23G launch vehicle, a refurbished ICBM. Titan 23G-12
took off from Space Launch Complex 4-West at Vandenberg and delivered
NOAA K into a suborbital trajectory 6 min later. A Thiokol (Cordant
Technologies) Star 37XFP solid motor on the satellite fired at apogee to
put NOAA K in orbit; this is a more powerful version of the Star 37S
orbit insertion motor used on earlier Tiros N satellites.
Another successful launch for the Boeing Delta 2 placed five
more Motorola Iridium satellites in orbit on May 17. This is the
final launch in the initial deployment of the Iridium constellation,
but launches of replacement satellites will continue.
I don't have the satellite numbers for the new launch yet;
the next free numbers are SV 70,72,73,74,75.
The Blok DM3 stage for the May 7 Proton launch did indeed make two burns
(see last week's issue). The second burn left Echostar in an 8318 x
35750 km x 15.3 deg orbit; the liquid apogee motor raised perigee to
12263 km a few days later. No element sets for the second burn transfer
orbit reached the Goddard web site at the time, but a Space Command
element set later reached the JPL archive sites.
Table of Recent Launches
------------------------
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Apr 2 0242 TRACE Pegasus XL Vandenberg RW30/15 Solar obs. 20A
Apr 7 0213 Iridium 62 Proton-K/DM2 Baykonur Comsat 21A
Iridium 63 Comsat 21B
Iridium 64 Comsat 21C
Iridium 65 Comsat 21D
Iridium 66 Comsat 21E
Iridium 67 Comsat 21F
Iridium 68 Comsat 21G
Apr 17 1819 Columbia ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39B Spaceship 22A
Neurolab )
Apr 24 2238 Globalstar FM6) Delta 7420 Canaveral SLC17 Comsat 23A
Globalstar FM8) 23B
Globalstar FM14) 23C
Globalstar FM15) 23D
Apr 28 2253 Nilesat 1 ) Ariane 44P Kourou ELA2 Comsat 24A
BSAT 1B ) Comsat 24B
Apr 29 0437 Kosmos-2350 Proton-K/DM-2 Baykonur Comsat? 25A
May 2 0916 Iridium 69 CZ-2C/SD Taiyuan Comsat 26A
Iridium 71 Comsat 26B
May 7 0853 Kosmos-2351 Molniya-M Plesetsk Early Warn 27A
May 7 2345 Echostar 4 Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur Comsat 28A
May 9 0138 USA 139 Titan Centaur Canaveral SLC40 Sigint 29A
May 13 1552 NOAA 15 Titan 2 Vandenberg SLC4W Weather 30A
May 14 2212 Progress M-39 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 31A
May 17 2116 Iridium ) Delta 7920 Vandenberg SLC2W Comsat 32A
Iridium ) 32B
Iridium ) 32C
Iridium ) 32D
Iridium ) 32E
Current Shuttle Processing Status
__________________________________
Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due
OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-93 Dec 3
OV-103 Discovery LC39A STS-91 Jun 2
OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP
OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-88 ?
MLP/SRB/ET/OV stacks
MLP1/RSRM66/ET-96/OV-103 LC39A STS-91
MLP2/
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.* |
| Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@head-cfa.harvard.edu, (un)subscribe jsr |
'-------------------------------------------------------------------------'
Jonathan's Space Report
No. 361 1998 May 24 Cambridge, MA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shuttle and Mir
---------------
Launch of the Station seems to be slipping further, with a probable
delay of STS-88 to December according to news reports. This would push
STS-93 to January according to the AP report.
Progress M-39 remains docked to the Mir orbital complex, and the crew
are unloading it. STS-91 is on the pad, ready for the final US trip to
Mir. In addition to Andrew Thomas, much of the US scientific equipment
aboard Mir will also be brought home.
For mission STS-91, Discovery's payload bay has a new configuration.
Forward in the bay is the external airlock and docking system. Behind
this is the tunnel adapter, which on most earlier missions was between
the docking system and the main cabin. Behind the tunnel adapter is the
Spacehab tunnel, followed by a single Spacehab module. The Spacehab
module carries water, food, and equipment for Mir. Further aft in the
payload bay is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. This particle physics
experiment uses a new cross-bay carrier, containing a large (3000 kg)
magnet and scintillator detectors which will be used in a search for
antiprotons and antinuclei in cosmic rays.
Eight GAS canisters are also installed in the payload bay. Bay 6 port
has SEM-3, with high school experiments, and an inert canister
containing commemorative flags. Bay 6 starboard has G-648 (Canadian
space agency organic thin films experiment) and another canister of
flags. Bay 13 port has G-765 (Canadian space agency fluids experiment)
and SEM-5 (high school passive experiments). Bay 13 starboard has two
small size (2.5-cubic foot) containers, G-090 and G-743.
Recent Launches
---------------
HGS-1 completed its first lunar flyby on May 13, and returned to a
perigee of about 36000 km at about 0300 UTC on May 17. HGS has decided
to send the satellite on a second lunar flyby on Jun 6 to further
improve the orbit. Current orbit is 35646 km x 475763 km x 18.2 deg.
Galaxy 4H, a Hughes HS-601 satellite, failed on May 19, disrupting pager
services across the United States. A computer failure resulted in loss
of attitude control. Ku-band traffic is being transferred to Galaxy 3R,
while Galaxy 6 is being moved to the Galaxy 4H orbital position to
replace its C-band coverage.
Echostar 4 has reportedly had problems deploying its solar panels.
Orbits
-------
The following discussion is for technically oriented pedants only.
There's been a lot of discussion lately about the exact definitions of
varous kinds of orbit: what is the difference between Low Earth Orbit
(LEO) and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO)? There's no right answer, since these
names are arbitrary. I have my own definitions, which I give below. The
boundaries I use are motivated by the physical boundaries in the
atmosphere and by historical practice.
My proposed definitions:
(1) Atmospheric (ATM): suborbital trajectory with apogee less than
80 km (mean height of the mesopause, and same as old USAF definition of
50 miles for astronaut wings)
(2) Suborbital spaceflight (SO): suborbital trajectory with apogee more
than 80 km.
(3) Transatmospheric orbit (TAO): orbital flight with perigee less than
80 km but more than zero. Potentially used by aerobraking missions and
transatmospheric vehicles, also in some temporary phases of orbital
flight (e.g. STS pre OMS-2, some failures when no apogee restart)
(4) LEO: Low Earth Orbit. Orbits with perigee above 80 km and apogee
less than L km. It's not clear what the value of L should be. A
histogram of apogee heights for objects currently in orbit shows a big
peak from 100 km to about 2500 km, followed by an almost empty region,
followed by a small peak at 19000 km (GLONASS and GPS) and another peak
at 36000 km (GEO). Why are there so few satellites in the 3000 - 19000
km range? It's because of the radiation belts. Of course polar orbit
satellites pass through the radiation belts even at low altitude (the
magnetosphere dips into the auroral circle). But at 3000 km and up you
pass through the belts at all latitudes. What is the lower level of the
radiation belts? I'm still researching this. However, if you look at the
apogee histogram in more detail, you see that the lower orbit satellites
have two broad peaks: one from 300 km to 1300km peaking at 800-1000 km;
and another at 1300-2200 km peaking at 1500 km. This analysis is
compromised by the fact that the histogram may be dominated by debris
objects from a small number of explosions; it would be better to plot
payloads only. Redoing the analysis with only international designations
"A" and "B" (e.g. 1997-04B, but not 1997-04F) gives a similar result
but with narrower peaks. In particular, there are very few payloads or
rocket stages with apogees in the 1100 to 1400 km or 1600 to 2000 km
ranges. I therefore suggest that the LEO/MEO boundary value L should be
set at either:
apogee 1000 km, a round number definition which would exclude the large
number of satellites in the 1000-1100 km range including Parus/Tsikada and
Transit navsats. I think 1000 km is a little too low to exclude.
apogee 1100 km, a strict definition of LEO
apogee 1600 km, a definition including Globalstar and Strela/Gonets and older ESSA/NOAA
polar satellites
apogee 2000 km, a safe 'round number' definition including all LEO
payloads and debris objects.
period 120 minutes ( 2 hours ). Another 'round number'.
This has an average height of 1680 km and a maximum apogee of 3280 km.
With the 2000 km or 2 hr definitions, MEO (Medium Earth Orbit) would be the relatively
unpopulated region between LEO and the geosynch corridor, which contains
the Glonass and GPS satellites and the old Midas early warning sats,
and not much else. I have decided to use the 2 hr definition, but I suspect
that the industry may end up using something toward the lower end, say
the 1100 km definition.
I consider several subcategories of LEO sorted by inclination. The physically
motivated one is LEO/S or SSO: Sun Synchronous orbit, when the orbital plane
precesses to keep the same sun angle. This requires a period (hh:min) of
T = 3:47 * ( - cos i )** (3/7) +/- 0:10, for i = 97.0 - 103.0 degrees.
It's probably good enough to use a less strict but simpler definition of SSO:
LEO/S Sun Synch T = 1:26 - 2:00, i = 95.0 - 104.0
One might also usefully define
LEO/R Retrograde: T = 1:26 - 2:00, i = 104.0 - 180.0
LEO/P Polar: T = 1:26 - 2:00, i = 85.0 - 95.0
LEO/E Equatorial T = 1:26 - 2:00, i = 0.0 - 20.0
Of course technically `retrograde' is anything with i more than 90.0 degrees,
but one is more likely to refer to orbits with i below 104 deg as polar or
sun-synchronous.
The next boundary of interest is between MEO and the 'geosynchronous
corridor'. To study the geosynchronous corridor, it's most helpful to
work in orbital period and consider drift rates. For a pure equatorial
orbit, non-Keplerian perturbations introduce drifts of order 0.05
degrees per day. These dominate Keplerian drift in longitude if the
period is roughly between 23h 55.5m and 23h 56.5 min. I call this
'geostationary orbit'. Satellites which are still operational but are
being moved from one slot to another usually are drifting at between 0.1
and 10 degrees per day. I find the 10 degree per day drift rate one
convenient boundary, corresponding to periods from 23h 17m to 24h 37m
(that's what I used to use in my geo.log file). An alternative criterion
is to make a period cut from 23h to 25h: 1 hour either side of the
geosynch period.
MEO is then everything vaguely circular below 23 hours and above LEO.
Objects which are in elliptical orbits and with MEO-type orbital
periods, I call HEO (highly elliptical orbits). A special case of HEO is
the Molniya orbit, with inclination 63 degrees and period 12 hours,
giving zero perigee precession and an apogee stabilized in longitude
every other orbit. Another special case is geostationary transfer orbit
(GTO), subclasses of which I defined in JSR 310 back in Jan 1997
(included in the summary table below).
I now use personal definitions as follows:
Period (hh:mm) Inc (deg) Ecc
Three with the synchronous period:
GEO/S Stationary 23:55.5 - 23:56.5 0.0 - 2.0 0.00 - 0.01
(the good stuff, circular and equatorial)
GEO/I Inclined GEO 23:55.5 - 23.56.5 0.0 - 2.0 0.01-0.05
and 23:55.5 - 23.56.5 2.0 - 20.0 0.00-0.05
(still circular and somewhat equatorial)
GEO/T Synchronous 23:55.5 - 23.56.5 0 - 20.0 0.05 - 0.85
and 23:55.5 - 23.56.5 20.0-180.0 0.00 - 0.85
(synchronous but not circular equatorial)
The corresponding three cases with periods not equal to the magic one:
GEO/D Drift GEO 23:00 - 25:00 0.0 - 2.0 0.00 - 0.05
GEO/ID Inc. Drift GEO 23:00 - 25:00 2.0 - 20.0 0.00 - 0.05
GEO/NS Near-Sync 23:00 - 25:00 0 - 180 0.05 - 0.85
and 23:00 - 25:00 20 - 180 0.00 - 0.85
Rather than High Earth Orbit (too easily confused with Highly Elliptical
Orbit) I use Deep Space Orbit (DSO), for anything circular above GEO,
and Deep Highly Eccentric Orbit (DHEO) for elliptical deep orbits.
Finally, I summarize the categories I am suggesting in the table below.
If you would like to propose alternative definitions, please forward
them to me.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Orbit Classification Summary
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(A = apogee/km, P = perigee/km, T = period/hh:mm, i = inc/deg, e = eccentricity)
Main categories
ATM Atmospheric A < 80
SO Suborbital A >= 80, P < 0
TAO Trans-Atm A >= 80, P = 0 - 80
LEO Low T= 1:26 - 2:00 (P>80)
MEO Medium T= 2:00 - 23:00, e < 0.5
HEO Highly Ellip T= 4:03 - 23:00, e > 0.5 (implies A > 13000)
GEO Near-Synch T=23:00 - 25:00
DSO Deep Space T>25:00, e < 0.5
DHEO Deep Eccentric T>25:00, e > 0.5
HCO Heliocentric
PCO Planetocentric
SSE Solar System Escape
Subcategories
LEO/S Sun Synch T = 1:26 - 2:00, i= 95.0 - 104.0
LEO/R Retrograde: T = 1:26 - 2:00, i= 104.0 - 180.0
LEO/P Polar: T = 1:26 - 2:00, i= 85.0 - 95.0
LEO/E Equatorial T = 1:26 - 2:00, i= 0.0 - 20.0
HEO/M: Molniya orbit T = 11:30 - 12:30, i= 62.0 - 64.0, e= 0.50 - 0.77
GEO/S Stationary T= 23:55.5 - 23:56.5,i= 0.0 - 2.0 0.00 - 0.01
GEO/I Inclined GEO T= 23:55.5 - 23.56.5,i= 0.0 - 20.0 0.00 - 0.05
GEO/T Synchronous T= 23:55.5 - 23.56.5,i= 0 - 180 0.00 - 0.85
GEO/D Drift GEO T=23:00 - 25:00 i= 0.0 - 2.0, e= 0.00 - 0.05
GEO/ID Inc. Drift GEO T=23:00 - 25:00 i= 0.0 - 20.0, e= 0.00 - 0.05
GEO/NS Near-Sync T=23:00 - 25:00 i= 0 - 180, e= 0.00 - 0.85
GTO subclasses of HEO, from JSR 310
GTO/L Low GTO A = 13000 - 30000
GTO/S Sub-GTO A = 30000 - 41000
GTO Std GTO P = 150 - 700, A = 34000 - 41000,
GTO/HP High Peri. GTO P = 700- 4000, A = 34000 - 41000,
GTO/H High GTO A > 41000
(Super-GTO now superseded by GTO/H and DHEO as appropriate)
Table of Recent Launches
------------------------
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Apr 2 0242 TRACE Pegasus XL Vandenberg RW30/15 Solar obs. 20A
Apr 7 0213 Iridium 62 Proton-K/DM2 Baykonur Comsat 21A
Iridium 63 Comsat 21B
Iridium 64 Comsat 21C
Iridium 65 Comsat 21D
Iridium 66 Comsat 21E
Iridium 67 Comsat 21F
Iridium 68 Comsat 21G
Apr 17 1819 Columbia ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39B Spaceship 22A
Neurolab )
Apr 24 2238 Globalstar FM6) Delta 7420 Canaveral SLC17A Comsat 23A
Globalstar FM8) 23B
Globalstar FM14) 23C
Globalstar FM15) 23D
Apr 28 2253 Nilesat 1 ) Ariane 44P Kourou ELA2 Comsat 24A
BSAT 1B ) Comsat 24B
Apr 29 0437 Kosmos-2350 Proton-K/DM-2 Baykonur Comsat? 25A
May 2 0916 Iridium 69 CZ-2C/SD Taiyuan Comsat 26A
Iridium 71 Comsat 26B
May 7 0853 Kosmos-2351 Molniya-M Plesetsk Early Warn 27A
May 7 2345 Echostar 4 Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur Comsat 28A
May 9 0138 USA 139 Titan Centaur Canaveral SLC40 Sigint 29A
May 13 1552 NOAA 15 Titan 2 Vandenberg SLC4W Weather 30A
May 14 2212 Progress M-39 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 31A
May 17 2116 Iridium 70) Delta 7920 Vandenberg SLC2W Comsat 32A
Iridium 72) Comsat 32B
Iridium 73) Comsat 32C
Iridium 74) Comsat 32D
Iridium 75) Comsat 32E
Current Shuttle Processing Status
__________________________________
Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due
OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-93 Jan ?
OV-103 Discovery LC39A STS-91 Jun 2
OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP
OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-88 Dec 3
MLP/SRB/ET/OV stacks
MLP1/RSRM66/ET-96/OV-103 LC39A STS-91
MLP2/
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: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/back |
| Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@head-cfa.harvard.edu, (un)subscribe jsr |
'-------------------------------------------------------------------------'
Jonathan's Space Report
No. 362 1998 Jun 2 Cambridge, MA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shuttle and Mir
---------------
Shuttle mission STS-91 was launched at 2206 UTC on Jun 2. This was the
first test of the super lightweight Al-Li external tank, which seems to
have worked fine. At 2215 UTC Discovery entered a temporary 74 x 324 km
x 51.6 deg orbit, with the OMS-2 burn due within the hour.
Discovery is scheduled to dock with the Mir space station, and pick up
astronaut Andy Thomas, ending the final US long duration flight to Mir.
It also carries a test flight of the AMS particle physics experiment.
The Shuttle schedule continues in flux. Although NASA will probably
announce an STS-88 target in December and a delay of STS-93 to January,
Russian delays in funding the ISS Service Module lead to me expect
STS-88 will continue to slip, which would mean STS-93 staying at its
current December date.
Recent Launches
---------------
China launched a Chang Zheng 3B launch vehicle from Xichang on May 30.
It orbited the Zhongwei 1 (Chinastar 1) satellite, an A2100 class comsat
built by Lockheed Martin/Sunnyvale. Zhongwei 1 will serve China, India,
Korea and southeast Asia with 18 C-band and 20 Ku-band transponders. It
is operated by the China Orient Telecommunications Satellite Co, part of
the Chinese telecoms ministry. Zhongwei 1 and the CZ-3B's final liquid
hydrogen upper stage were placed in an initial supersynchronous 216 x
85035 km x 24.4 deg transfer orbit.
Table of Recent Launches
------------------------
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
May 2 0916 Iridium 69 CZ-2C/SD Taiyuan Comsat 26A
Iridium 71 Comsat 26B
May 7 0853 Kosmos-2351 Molniya-M Plesetsk Early Warn 27A
May 7 2345 Echostar 4 Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur Comsat 28A
May 9 0138 USA 139 Titan Centaur Canaveral SLC40 Sigint 29A
May 13 1552 NOAA 15 Titan 2 Vandenberg SLC4W Weather 30A
May 14 2212 Progress M-39 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 31A
May 17 2116 Iridium 70) Delta 7920 Vandenberg SLC2W Comsat 32A
Iridium 72) Comsat 32B
Iridium 73) Comsat 32C
Iridium 74) Comsat 32D
Iridium 75) Comsat 32E
May 30 1000 Zhongwei 1 CZ-3B Xichang Comsat 33A
Jun 2 2206 Discovery ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship
Spacehab )
Current Shuttle Processing Status
__________________________________
Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due
OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-93 Unknown
OV-103 Discovery LEO STS-91
OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP
OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-88 Unknown
MLP/SRB/ET/OV stacks
MLP1/
MLP2/
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: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/back |
| Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@head-cfa.harvard.edu, (un)subscribe jsr |
'-------------------------------------------------------------------------'
Jonathan's Space Report
No. 363 1998 Jun 18 Cambridge, MA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shuttle and Mir
---------------
Discovery docked with the SO module on Mir at 1700 UTC on June 4. Andy
Thomas became part of the Discovery crew, Valeriy Ryumin carried out an
inspection tour of Mir, and NASA equipment was retrieved from the
station. Discovery undocked at 1601 UTC on Jun 8, ending NASA
participation in the Mir program. STS-91 landed on Runway 15 at Kennedy
Space Center at 1800 UTC on Jun 12. Discovery is now in Orbiter
Processing Bay 2 and will be turned around to perform the next Shuttle
mission, STS-95 in October.
The lack of Ku-band coverage meant that the AMS experiment was
only able to send back a small amount of data in real time, but
reportedly AMS did detect cosmic-ray antiprotons as expected.
GRAB Declassified
------------------
On Jun 17 the National Reconnaissance Office and the Naval Research Lab
(NRO and NRL) declassified GRAB, the first signals intelligence satellite.
GRAB was first launched in June 1960, shortly before the first successful
flight of the CORONA imaging satellite. It carried receivers to
catalog and characterize Soviet air defence radars. It also carried
a scientific solar X-ray detector as a cover story - the satellite was
given the cover name SOLRAD. It was launched together with TRANSIT 2A.
Five GRAB satellites were launched, not counting an inert dummy used
to prove the dual satellite launching technique. The declassification
did not reveal which the other satellites were, but my reconstruction is:
Dummy 1960 Apr 13 (with Transit 1B)
GRAB 1 1960 Jun 22 (with Transit 2A)
GRAB 2 1960 Nov 30 (with Transit 3A, failed to orbit)
GRAB 3 1961 Jun 29 (with Transit 4A, second success)
GRAB 4 1962 Jan 24 (with other NRL satellites, failed to orbit)
GRAB 5 1962 Apr 26 (on a Scout, failed to orbit)
At the time, the name GREB was used in open sources some of the time,
presumably just a misprint. GRAB stands for Galactic Radiation And Background,
while GREB supposedly stood for Galactic Radiation Experiment Background.
Neither name makes much sense.
After mid-1962 , GRAB successor satellites were launched
under the auspices of the NRO, but these haven't been declassified yet.
The GRAB satellite was NRL's first satellite after the Vanguard program,
and it used the 20-inch Vanguard sphere as its structure. Thus, the
purely civilian Vanguard program quickly led to a military successor;
work on GRAB began around the time of the first successful Vanguard launch.
GRAB data was given by NRL to both Strategic Air Command (to help
bombers figure out how to avoid Soviet radars) and NSA.
See my 1997 JBIS paper (Vol 50, p 427) for more on NRL's early satellites.
While at NRL, I got to see the flight ICM (Interim Control Module for
Space Station). ICM has APAS type docking ports on each face. It is
launched in the Shuttle attached to a large cylindrical fairing at the
far end of wh ich are trunnions which attach to the payload bay.
Apparently ICM and cylinder swing up out of the bay somehow and then ICM
is placed on the ODS by the RMS arm? The Shuttle/ICM then docks with
the Zarya tug. No word on when ICM will fly; that still depends on the
politics of persuading the Russian government to support completion of
the SM module. The ICM vehicle has some propulsion work still to do
and doesn't have its docking ports yet, but I understand things are
moving full steam ahead.
I also got to hear a talk by Milt Rosen, parent of the Viking and
Vanguard rockets, who seems in fine form and gave an engaging account
of the Vanguard program, emphasizing its successes in the end, seeding
NASA's space science program and leading to the Delta rocket. Likewise
Roger Easton, who talked about the early NRL and rival proposals which
led to the GPS navigation satellites.
Recent Launches
---------------
A Hughes HS-376HP spin-stabilized comsat, Thor III, was launched for
Telenor Satellite Services AS of Oslo by Boeing on Jun 11. The Delta
7925 launch vehicle placed Thor III in geostationary transfer orbit.
Delta's second stage entered a low circular orbit, then raised apogee to
about 1400 km, then in a third burn circularized at that altitude and
separated from the third stage, which delivered the payload to a high
perigee transfer orbit. The Delta stage 2 then made a fourth burn to
lower perigee again so that it would reenter quickly. The Thor III
satellite will use a Thiokol Star 30 motor to circularize its orbit
at geostationary altitude.
The RVSN (Russian Strategic Rocket Forces) launched six Strela-3
military communications satellites on Jun 15 with a 11K68 Tsiklon-3
launch vehicle. The circularization burn by the S5M third stage seems to
have gone awry, leaving the satellites in a more elliptical orbit than
usual, 1300 x 1900 km. The RVSN is quoting this as the first multiple
launch by the Rocket Forces, which is not quite true - RVSN's space
forces did multiple launches since the early 1960s, but those space
forces were later made an independent agency, the VKS. This is the first
multiple launch since the VKS was disbanded last year and launch
operations returned to the authority of the RVSN.
A Minuteman ICBM was probably launched on a suborbital flight test from
Vandenberg's LF-26 silo to Kwajalein missile range on June 3. I haven't
had confirmation of the flight yet.
Table of Recent Launches
------------------------
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
May 2 0916 Iridium 69 CZ-2C/SD Taiyuan Comsat 26A
Iridium 71 Comsat 26B
May 7 0853 Kosmos-2351 Molniya-M Plesetsk Early Warn 27A
May 7 2345 Echostar 4 Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur Comsat 28A
May 9 0138 USA 139 Titan Centaur Canaveral SLC40 Sigint 29A
May 13 1552 NOAA 15 Titan 2 Vandenberg SLC4W Weather 30A
May 14 2212 Progress M-39 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 31A
May 17 2116 Iridium 70) Delta 7920 Vandenberg SLC2W Comsat 32A
Iridium 72) Comsat 32B
Iridium 73) Comsat 32C
Iridium 74) Comsat 32D
Iridium 75) Comsat 32E
May 30 1000 Zhongwei 1 CZ-3B Xichang Comsat 33A
Jun 2 2206 Discovery ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 34A
Spacehab )
Jun 11 0035 Thor 3 Delta 7925 Canaveral LC17A Comsat 35A
Jun 15 2258 Kosmos-2352 ) Tsiklon-3 Plesetsk LC32 Comsat 36A
Kosmos-2353 ) Comsat 36B
Kosmos-2354 ) Comsat 36C
Kosmos-2355 ) Comsat 36D
Kosmos-2356 ) Comsat 36E
Kosmos-2357 ) Comsat 36F
Current Shuttle Processing Status
__________________________________
Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due
OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-93 Unknown
OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-95 Oct 29
OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP
OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-88 Unknown
MLP/SRB/ET/OV stacks
MLP1/
MLP2/
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: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/back |
| Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@head-cfa.harvard.edu, (un)subscribe jsr |
'-------------------------------------------------------------------------'
Jonathan's Space Report
No. 364 1998 Jun 24 Cambridge, MA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shuttle and Mir
---------------
The next Shuttle mission is STS-95, in October.
On the Mir space station complex, the Progress M-39 cargo ship is docked
to the Kvant module, and the Soyuz TM-27 transport is docked to the PKhO
transfer module on the Mir base compartment. The EO-25 mission crew of
Talgat Musabaev and Nikolai Budarin are scheduled to be replaced in
August by EO-26 crew Gennadiy Padalka and Sergey Avdeev.
Recent Launches
---------------
HGS-1, following a second lunar flyby on Jun 6, successfully reached
inclined geosynchronous orbit and is now drifting over the Pacific at
0.5 degree per day. On Jun 19 it was over 152W in a 35681 x 35963 km x
8.7 deg orbit. The Hughes team deserve to be congratulated on this
spectacular and innovative rescue mission.
Intelsat 805 was launched by an Atlas 2AS on Jun 18 into a standard
geostationary transfer orbit. Intelsat 805 is an LM7000 series satellite
built by Lockheed Martin/East Windsor. Launch mass is 3520 kg; the
satellite has 28 C-band and 3 Ku-band transponders, and will initially
serve the Atlantic Ocean region for INTELSAT.
Two Minuteman III missiles were launched from Vandenberg to Kwajalein
Atoll on Jun 24, one from silo LF-09 and the second from LF-10. Each
carried three re-entry vehicles.
Erratum: Thor 3 launch date was Jun 10, not Jun 11.
Table of Recent Launches
------------------------
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
May 2 0916 Iridium 69 CZ-2C/SD Taiyuan Comsat 26A
Iridium 71 Comsat 26B
May 7 0853 Kosmos-2351 Molniya-M Plesetsk Early Warn 27A
May 7 2345 Echostar 4 Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur Comsat 28A
May 9 0138 USA 139 Titan Centaur Canaveral SLC40 Sigint 29A
May 13 1552 NOAA 15 Titan 2 Vandenberg SLC4W Weather 30A
May 14 2212 Progress M-39 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 31A
May 17 2116 Iridium 70) Delta 7920 Vandenberg SLC2W Comsat 32A
Iridium 72) Comsat 32B
Iridium 73) Comsat 32C
Iridium 74) Comsat 32D
Iridium 75) Comsat 32E
May 30 1000 Zhongwei 1 CZ-3B Xichang Comsat 33A
Jun 2 2206 Discovery ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 34A
Spacehab )
Jun 10 0035 Thor 3 Delta 7925 Canaveral LC17A Comsat 35A
Jun 15 2258 Kosmos-2352 ) Tsiklon-3 Plesetsk LC32 Comsat 36A
Kosmos-2353 ) Comsat 36B
Kosmos-2354 ) Comsat 36C
Kosmos-2355 ) Comsat 36D
Kosmos-2356 ) Comsat 36E
Kosmos-2357 ) Comsat 36F
Jun 18 2248 Intelsat 805 Atlas 2AS Canaveral LC36A Comsat 37A
Current Shuttle Processing Status
__________________________________
Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due
OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-93 Unknown
OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-95 Oct 29
OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP
OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-88 Unknown
MLP/SRB/ET/OV stacks
MLP1/
MLP2/
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: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/back |
| Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@head-cfa.harvard.edu, (un)subscribe jsr |
'-------------------------------------------------------------------------'
Jonathan's Space Report
No. 365 1998 Jul 3 Cambridge, MA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shuttle and Mir
---------------
The next Shuttle mission is STS-95, in October. Talgat Musabaev and
Nikolai Budarin are continuing work aboard the Mir complex.
AXAF
----
The STS-93 crew visited the AXAF Operations Control Center in Cambridge,
Mass. on Jun 25. STS-93 commander Eileen Collins drew attention to the
fact that AXAF deployment is scheduled for the first mission day, when
cremembers are still adjusting to free fall, and that the AXAF mission
will be the heaviest Shuttle launch weight ever, with a center of
gravity well to the rear of the payload bay. Pilot Jeff Ashby, a Navy
Gulf War veteran, will be on his first mission. Steve Hawley is the most
experienced crew member; he's the only astronomer aboard so many in the
audience felt a strong sense of identification with him. He will be the
mission flight engineer. Cady Coleman, whose MIT and UMass background
were critical in navigating the crew from Hanscom AFB to the control
center, will be in charge of AXAF/IUS deployment. She will be backed
up by Michel Tognini, a French astronaut who is a veteran of a 1992
Mir visit. Tognini is also prime EVA crewmember for the flight, in
case an emergency (`contingency') spacewalk were needed. This would
be particularly tricky since AXAF fills the whole payload bay, with
the delicate science instrument module pretty close to the airlock
door.
Recent Launches
---------------
The Planet-B probe to Mars was launched on Jul 3. The ISAS M-5 launch
vehicle took off from Kagoshima space center in Japan and placed
Planet-B in parking orbit. After lunar flybys, Planet-B will
be placed in solar orbit and reach Mars in Oct 1999. It carries
instruments to study the Martian ionosphere and plasma environment
from Mars orbit. I don't have many details of the launch yet, but
I hope to know more by next issue.
Kosmos-2358, launched on Jun 24, is a Yantar'-class spy satellite,
probably in the Kobal't series. It consists of an instrument-aggregate
module which has some design heritage in common with the Soyuz service
module, together with a large reentry vehicle containing the camera
system, and probably at least two small reentry capsules which return
film during the mission, expected to last about three months. The
Yantar' series are built by the TsSKB-Progress enterprise in Samara,
Russia, which also built the 11A511U "Soyuz-U" launch vehicle. The low
perigee, 67 degree inclination orbit used by Kosmos-2358 is
characteristic of the high resolution recoverable Yantar' satellites.
Kosmos-2359, launched on Jun 25, is another recon satellite launched by
Soyuz-U and built by TsSKB-Progress. It entered a 170 x 290 km x 64.9
deg initial orbit typical of the Kosmos-2031 class, thought to be a
further development of the Yantar' series with multiple small return
capsules and no main recoverable section. It will probably maneuver to a
205 x 320 km orbit on Jun 26.
A Molniya-3 communications satellite was launched on Jul 1 into an
elliptical 62.8 degree orbit. The Molniya satellites are built by NPO
PM; the Molniya-M (8K78M) launch vehicle is built by TsSKB-Progress and
is similar to the Soyuz-U but with a 'Blok ML' fourth stage.
The SOHO solar observatory, orbiting the Earth-Sun L1 point, has been
lost due to an apparent gyroscope problem. No contact has been made with
the satellite since Jun 25. Attempts to resume contact with the
satellite continue, but it looks bad for the very successful SOHO
satellite.
Proton Launch Vehicle
---------------------
Issue 1998 No. 10 of the Russian magazine Novosti Kosmonavtiki
(published by Videocosmos, icosmos@dol.ru) contains a complete listing
of launches of the Proton launch vehicle, including such details as
launch times, pads, and even payload serial numbers.
Some teasing highlights from the
Proton launch list to give you a flavor:
- Kosmos-382, the orbital test of the lunar Soyuz, was L1-E No. 2K,
launched at 1700:00 UTC 1970 Dec 2 from pad 81L by Proton No. 252-01
with Blok D No. 26.
- Kosmos-637, Russia's first 24-hour satellite, was a GVM (mass mockup)
of the 11F638 Raduga satellite, military name Gran', launched by Proton
282-01 from pad 81L.
- Satellite N-4 No. 3 (would have been Proton-3) launched by Proton 211
in Mar 1966, failed to orbit due to second stage failure.
- Kosmos-2291 is comsat Geizer No. 19L, launched by Proton 381-02.
If you haven't been following the details of the USSR space program
since its glory days, trust me that it's amazing to see this level of
detail about stuff we spent years guessing about. I'll be updating the
geostationary satellite log soon to reflect the correct names of the
Russian geostationary satellites.
For score counters, the following satellites are not fully identified in
the Proton list and may be presumed to be still classified: Kosmos-775;
Kosmos-1546, 1894, 1940, 2133, 2155, 2209, 2224, 2282, 2345, 2350 (all
thought to be early warning sats); Raduga-1 satellites; Luch-1, and
also Kosmos-1603, Kosmos-1656 (identified as Tselina-2 but no serial
nos.) In addition, serial numbers for the Kosmos-997/998 reentry tests
are not given.
Table of Recent Launches
------------------------
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Jun 2 2206 Discovery ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 34A
Spacehab )
Jun 10 0035 Thor 3 Delta 7925 Canaveral LC17A Comsat 35A
Jun 15 2258 Kosmos-2352 ) Tsiklon-3 Plesetsk LC32 Comsat 36A
Kosmos-2353 ) Comsat 36B
Kosmos-2354 ) Comsat 36C
Kosmos-2355 ) Comsat 36D
Kosmos-2356 ) Comsat 36E
Kosmos-2357 ) Comsat 36F
Jun 18 2248 Intelsat 805 Atlas 2AS Canaveral LC36A Comsat 37A
Jun 24 1830 Kosmos-2358 Soyuz-U Plesetsk Recon 38A
Jun 25 1400 Kosmos-2359 Soyuz-U Baykonur Recon 39A
Jul 1 Molniya-3 Molniya-M Plesetsk Comsat 40A
Jul 3 1812 Planet B M-5 Kagoshima Mars probe
Current Shuttle Processing Status
__________________________________
Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due
OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-93 Unknown
OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-95 Oct 29
OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP
OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-88 Unknown
.-------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| 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: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/back |
| Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@head-cfa.harvard.edu, (un)subscribe jsr |
'-------------------------------------------------------------------------'
Jonathan's Space Report
No. 366 1998 Jul 11 Cambridge, MA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shuttle and Mir
---------------
The next Shuttle mission is STS-95, in October; best wishes to
all of the folks down at KSC, hoping their homes have escaped
the depredations of the Florida wildfires.
Talgat Musabaev and Nikolai Budarin are continuing work aboard the Mir
complex. Launch of the replacement crew of Padalka and Avdeev has
slipped a couple of weeks to mid-August. On Jun 30 Mir was in a 367 x
377 km x 51.6 deg orbit; the orbit will be slowly lowered over the next
year prior to Mir's deliberate reentry.
Recent Launches
---------------
The Japanese Planet-B probe has been renamed Nozomi ("Hope"). Nozomi is
a project of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Sciences (ISAS),
Japan's scientific space agency. The M-V-3 launch vehicle took off from
Kagoshima Space Center; the third stage and payload entered a 146 x 417
km x 31.1 deg parking orbit. The KM-V1 kick (fourth) stage then fired to
place Nozomi in a 359 x 401491 km x 28.6 deg deep orbit, from which it
will make lunar and Earth gravity assist passes to increase its energy
for solar orbit insertion and the cruise to Mars. M-V-3 was the second
M-V launch (M-V-2, carrying the Lunar A probe, has been delayed).
Thanks to T. Imachi for information on the kick stage.
On Jul 7 at 0315 UTC Russia carried out the first satellite launch from
a submarine. The Shtil'-1 launch vehicle is a converted R-29RM (RSM-54)
three stage liquid propellant submarine launched ballistic missile made
by the Makeev design bureau; the satellite payload is placed in the
standard Shtil' reentry vehicle. The launch plaform was the K-407
`Novomoskovsk', a 667BDRM Del'fin class submarine of the Russian
Northern Fleet's 3rd Flotilla, from a range in the Barents Sea off the
coast of the Kol'skiy Peninsula, at approximately 35.3 deg E 69.3 deg N.
This is the first orbital launch of a rocket from the GRTs KB Makeev and
the first orbital launch carried out by the VMF (Voenno-Morskiy Flot,
the Russian Navy).
The Shtil'-1 launched the German 8 kg Tubsat-N `nanosatellite' and its
companion 3 kg Tubsat-N1. Tubsat-N entered a 400 x 776 km x 78.9 deg
orbit. Both Tubsat-N and Tubsat-N1 carry a small store-forward
communications payload which will be used to keep track of transmitters
placed on vehicles, migrating animals, and marine buoys. They are
owned, operated and built by the Technische Universitat Berlin (TUB).
TUB's earlier satellites were Tubsat-A, launched on an Ariane in Jul
1991, and Tubsat-B, launched on an 11K68 Tsiklon-3 from Plesetsk in Jan
1994. Thanks to Igor Lissov, Asif Siddiqi, Steve Zaloga and Veit
Zimmermann for background info.
The 11K77 Zenit-2 launch vehicle returned to service on Jul 10 with the
launch of the Resurs-O1 No. 4 satellite from Baykonur. Resurs-O1, built
by VNII Elektromekhaniki and based on the Meteor weather satellites, is
a Russian civil remote sensing satellite analogous to the Landsats. The
satellite may also be designated Resurs-O2 No. 1 according to some
sources. As well as remote sensing equipment, the satellite carries the
Belgian LLMS (Little LEO Messaging System) communications payload for
the IRIS system. The satellite entered an 815 x 818 km x 98.8 deg
sun-synchronous orbit; the launch appears to have been fully successful.
This launch was critical in restoring confidence in the Zenit vehicle
prior to planned launches of Globalstar satellites from Baykonur and the
first Sea Launch flights using a three-stage Zenit.
Four subsatellites were launched with Resurs-O1 No. 4. They are
Fasat-Bravo, a 50 kg Microbus class test satellite built by Surrey
Satellite for the Chilean Air Force, Safir 2, a German space agency 60
kg relay satellite built by OHB System of Bremen, TMSAT, another Uosat
Microbus-class payload built by Surrey Satellite for the Thai
Microsatellite Co. of Bangkok and carrying a combined Earth observation
and data comms. payload, and Gurwin Techsat 1B, built by the
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and replacing an earlier
Techsat which failed to orbit in 1995.
The Kosmos-2359 recon satellite manuevered to its operational orbit of
240 x 302 km x 64.9 deg on Jun 27.
The Orihime and Hikoboshi satellites undocked and redocked on Jul 7
in its FP-1 test of automated docking systems. Despite the claims of
the NASDA space agency that this is a first, automated Russian craft have
docked on many occasions since the Kosmos-186/188 docking in 1968.
Table of Recent Launches
------------------------
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Jun 2 2206 Discovery ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 34A
Spacehab )
Jun 10 0035 Thor 3 Delta 7925 Canaveral LC17A Comsat 35A
Jun 15 2258 Kosmos-2352 ) Tsiklon-3 Plesetsk LC32/1 Comsat 36A
Kosmos-2353 ) Comsat 36B
Kosmos-2354 ) Comsat 36C
Kosmos-2355 ) Comsat 36D
Kosmos-2356 ) Comsat 36E
Kosmos-2357 ) Comsat 36F
Jun 18 2248 Intelsat 805 Atlas 2AS Canaveral LC36A Comsat 37A
Jun 24 1830 Kosmos-2358 Soyuz-U Plesetsk Recon 38A
Jun 25 1400 Kosmos-2359 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC31 Recon 39A
Jul 1 Molniya-3 Molniya-M Plesetsk Comsat 40A
Jul 3 1812 Nozomi M-5 Kagoshima Mars probe 41A
Jul 7 0315 Tubsat-N ) Shtil'-1 K-407,Barents Comsat 42A
Tubsat-N1 ) Comsat 42B
Jul 10 0627? Resurs-O1 No. 4 ) Zenit-2 Baykonur LC45 Rem. Sens. 43A
Fasat-Bravo )
TMSAT )
SAFIR-2 )
Gurwin Techsat 1B)
Current Shuttle Processing Status
__________________________________
Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due
OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-93 Unknown
OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-95 Oct 29
OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP
OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-88 Unknown
.-------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| 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: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/back |
| Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@head-cfa.harvard.edu, (un)subscribe jsr |
'-------------------------------------------------------------------------'
Jonathan's Space Report
No. 367 1998 Jul 26 Cambridge, MA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTICE: Due to a systems change here at CFA, my personal email address
has changed to
jcm@cfa.harvard.edu
effective immediately - mail to the old address at urania.harvard.edu
will no longer work.
Alan Shepard
------------
The second human in space, Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr., died Jul 22 (UTC)
in Monterey, California of leukemia at the age of 74. Shepard was the
pilot of Freedom Seven (Mercury Spacecraft 7), which was launched on the
MR-3 suborbital flight on 1961 May 5. Shepard was also the commander
of Apollo 14, the third lunar landing mission.
The first 20 humans in space (by the 80 km definition I choose to adopt)
were:
Yuriy Alexeevich Gagarin (1934-1968) 3KA No. 3 "Vostok"
Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. (1923-1998) Mercury SC7 "Freedom Seven"
Virgil Ivan Grissom (1926-1967) Mercury SC11 "Liberty Bell 7"
German Stepanovich Titov (1935- ) 3KA No. 4 "Vostok-2"
John Herschel Glenn, Jr. (1921- ) Mercury SC13 "Friendship Seven"
Malcolm Scott Carpenter (1925- ) Mercury SC18 "Aurora Seven"
Robert Michael White (1924- ) X-15-3 Flight 3-7-14
Andriyan Grigorevich Nikolaev (1929- ) 3KA No. 5 "Vostok-3"
Pavel Romanovich Popovich (1930- ) 3KA No. 6 "Vostok-4"
Walter Marty Schirra, Jr (1923- ) Mercury SC16 "Sigma Seven"
Joseph Albert Walker (1921-1966) X-15-3 Flight 3-14-24
Leroy Gordon Cooper, Jr (1927- ) Mercury SC20 "Faith Seven"
Valeriy Fyodorovich Bykovskiy (1934- ) 3KA No. 7 "Vostok-5"
Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova (1937- ) 3KA No. 8 "Vostok-6"
Robert Aitken Rushworth (1924-1993) X-15-3 Flight 3-20-31
Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov (1927-1967) 3KV No. 3 "Voskhod"
Konstantin Petrovich Feoktistov (1926- ) 3KV No. 3 "Voskhod"
Boris Borisovich Yegorov (1937-1994) 3KV No. 3 "Voskhod"
Pavel Ivanovich Belyaev (1925-1970) 3KD No. 4 "Voskhod-2"
Aleksei Arkhipovich Leonov (1934- ) 3KD No. 4 "Voskhod-2"
Get Well, Bill
--------------
CBS space correspondent Bill Harwood was injured in a car crash on Jul
11. Bill's site http://uttm.com/space/ is one of the best sources on
Shuttle news. Let's hope Bill makes a speedy recovery.
Shuttle and Mir
---------------
The next Shuttle mission is STS-95, in October.
The EO-25 crew of Talgat Musabaev and Nikolai Budarin are continuing
work aboard the Mir complex. The EO-26 crew of Gennadiy Padalka and
Sergey Avdeev, together with Yuriy Baturin, will be launched on Soyuz
TM-28 on Aug 13. Musabaev, Budarin and Baturin land in Soyuz TM-27 on
Aug 25. The EO-27 crew at launch on 1999 Feb 22 is Viktor Afanas'ev and
two cosmonaut-researchers, Jean-Pierre Haignere of France and Ivan Bella
of Slovakia. According to some reports, Haignere and Bella will land on
Mar 2 in Soyuz TM-28, with the long stay EO-28 crew becoming Afanas'ev
and Avdeev; however it seems likely that Haignere will in fact replace
Avdeev on the long-stay crew. Finally, on 1999 Jun 1 the crew will
depart Mir in Soyuz TM-29 and land, with the Mir complex being deorbited
a week later. This schedule, of course, is almost certain to change.
Recent Launches
---------------
In addition to the satellites mentioned in JSR 366, a fifth
microsatellite was launched along with Resurs-O1 No. 4 on Jul 10. The
WESTPAC (formerly WPLTN-1) geodesy satellite is a copy of Potsdam's
GFZ-1 satellite, a sphere covered with laser retroreflectors, with a
slightly different `Fizeau' corner cube design. It is a target for the
Western Pacific Laser Tracking Network (WPLTN) and is a joint project of
Electro Optic Systems of Queanbeyan, New South Wales, Australia, and the
Russian Space Agency. Mass is around 24 kg and diameter around 0.24m.
The WPLTN is headquartered in Australia and Space Command has cataloged
the satellite as Australian. AUSLIG (Australian Surveying and Land
Information Group), part of the Australian Federal Govt., may be the
actual satellite owner.
China launched a Chang Zheng 3B on Jul 18 at 0920 UTC carrying the
Sinosat 1 communications satellite. The CZ-3B's liquid hydrogen upper
stage and the Sinosat were placed in a 609 x 35958 km x 19.0 deg
geostationary transfer orbit at 0945 UTC. The first two liquid apogee
burns were carried out on Jul 19 and 21. Sinosat is an Alcatel (formerly
Aerospatiale) Spacebus 3000 class satellite, built at the Cannes
facility. Launch mass was 2820 kg. Sinosat is owned temporarily by
EurasSpace, a joint venture between Daimler-Benz Aerospace and the
China Aerospace Corp., and will be delivered after on-orbit testing to
Sino Satellite Communications Co. of Shanghai for communications
services in China. Thanks to Stefan Barensky for details.
Aleksandr Zheleznyakov reports that the Molniya-3 launch time was
0048 UT on Jul 1.
The Galileo Orbiter had a safemode event at around 1814 UTC on Jul 20
during its inbound approach to the inner Jovian system, causing loss of
almost all the data from the Europa 16 encounter. Telemetry from the
spacecraft has now resumed. Galileo passed 1837 km from Europa's surface
at 0507 UTC on Jul 21, just after perijove at 632000 km radius, at 0019
UTC on Jul 21.
Table of Recent Launches
------------------------
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Jun 2 2206 Discovery ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 34A
Spacehab )
Jun 10 0035 Thor 3 Delta 7925 Canaveral LC17A Comsat 35A
Jun 15 2258 Kosmos-2352 ) Tsiklon-3 Plesetsk LC32/1 Comsat 36A
Kosmos-2353 ) Comsat 36B
Kosmos-2354 ) Comsat 36C
Kosmos-2355 ) Comsat 36D
Kosmos-2356 ) Comsat 36E
Kosmos-2357 ) Comsat 36F
Jun 18 2248 Intelsat 805 Atlas 2AS Canaveral LC36A Comsat 37A
Jun 24 1830 Kosmos-2358 Soyuz-U Plesetsk Recon 38A
Jun 25 1400 Kosmos-2359 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC31 Recon 39A
Jul 1 0048 Molniya-3 Molniya-M Plesetsk Comsat 40A
Jul 3 1812 Nozomi M-5 Kagoshima Mars probe 41A
Jul 7 0315 Tubsat-N ) Shtil'-1 K-407,Barents Comsat 42A
Tubsat-N1 ) Comsat 42B
Jul 10 0630 Resurs-O1 No. 4 ) Zenit-2 Baykonur LC45 Rem. Sens. 43A
Fasat-Bravo ) Exptl. 43B
TMSAT ) Exptl. 43C
Gurwin Techsat 1B) Exptl. 43D
WESTPAC ) Geodesy 43E
SAFIR-2 ) Comsat 43F
Jul 18 0920 Sinosat CZ-3B Xichang LC2 Comsat 44A
Current Shuttle Processing Status
__________________________________
Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due
OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-93 Unknown
OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-95 Oct 29
OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP
OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-88 Unknown
.-------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| 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 |
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'-------------------------------------------------------------------------'
Jonathan's Space Report
No. 368 1998 Aug 12 Cambridge, MA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shuttle and Mir
---------------
The next Shuttle mission is STS-95, in October. Although I am still
sceptical of the proposed launch dates for STS-88 and STS-93, things
seem stable enough at the moment that I've started listing them again
below.
Recent Launches
---------------
Titan 4A-20 exploded 42 seconds after launch from Cape Canaveral on Aug
12. The vehicle was a Lockheed Martin Titan 4A-Centaur model, the last
4A and the last with the UTC/CSD solid rocket boosters to be launched;
all future Titan 4s will be Titan 4Bs and will have Alliant SRMU solid
rocket boosters. The payload is thought to have been a signals
intelligence satellite, one of the follow-ons to the VORTEX series.
Earlier payloads in the series were launched in Aug 1994 and Apr 1996.
The Titan 4 seems to have pitched over 40s after launch, implying a
probable guidance failure. The vehicle would then have exploded due to
structural failure, as it is not designed to survive flying sideways.
Kosmos-2360 was launched on Jul 28 by a Zenit-2 launch vehicle
from Baykonur. Kosmos-2360 is a Tselina-2 electronic intelligence
satellite built by the Yuzhnoe company in Dnepropetrovsk,
Ukraine.
8 small Orbcomm communications satellites were launched on Aug 2. The
L-1011 carrier aircraft took off from Wallops Island with a Pegasus
XL/HAPS rocket aboard. The rocket was launched 100 km E of the Virginia
coast (I have been unable to find out the latitude and longitude, if
anyone knows them please let me know). The Pegasus XL has three
solid stages which delivered the Orbcomm/HAPS stack to a suborbital
trajectory. The first burn of the HAPS hydrazine engine placed the stack
in an elliptical transfer orbit, and a second burn circularized the
orbit at apogee, followed shortly by deployment of the eight
disk-shaped payloads. Orbcomm is a subsdiary of Orbital Sciences Corp.,
which builds the Pegasus rocket.
Table of Recent Launches
------------------------
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Jun 2 2206 Discovery ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 34A
Spacehab )
Jun 10 0035 Thor 3 Delta 7925 Canaveral LC17A Comsat 35A
Jun 15 2258 Kosmos-2352 ) Tsiklon-3 Plesetsk LC32/1 Comsat 36A
Kosmos-2353 ) Comsat 36B
Kosmos-2354 ) Comsat 36C
Kosmos-2355 ) Comsat 36D
Kosmos-2356 ) Comsat 36E
Kosmos-2357 ) Comsat 36F
Jun 18 2248 Intelsat 805 Atlas 2AS Canaveral LC36A Comsat 37A
Jun 24 1830 Kosmos-2358 Soyuz-U Plesetsk Recon 38A
Jun 25 1400 Kosmos-2359 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC31 Recon 39A
Jul 1 0048 Molniya-3 Molniya-M Plesetsk Comsat 40A
Jul 3 1812 Nozomi M-5 Kagoshima Mars probe 41A
Jul 7 0315 Tubsat-N ) Shtil'-1 K-407,Barents Comsat 42A
Tubsat-N1 ) Comsat 42B
Jul 10 0630 Resurs-O1 No. 4 ) Zenit-2 Baykonur LC45 Rem. Sens. 43A
Fasat-Bravo ) Exptl. 43B
TMSAT ) Exptl. 43C
Gurwin Techsat 1B) Exptl. 43D
WESTPAC ) Geodesy 43E
SAFIR-2 ) Comsat 43F
Jul 18 0920 Sinosat CZ-3B Xichang LC2 Comsat 44A
Jul 28 0915 Kosmos-2360 Zenit-2 Baykonur LC45 Sigint 45A
Aug 2 1624 Orbcomm FM13 ) Pegasus XL Wallops Comsat 46A
Orbcomm FM14 ) Comsat 46B
Orbcomm FM15 ) Comsat 46C
Orbcomm FM16 ) Comsat 46D
Orbcomm FM17 ) Comsat 46E
Orbcomm FM18 ) Comsat 46F
Orbcomm FM19 ) Comsat 46G
Orbcomm FM20 ) Comsat 46H
Aug 12 1130 USA Titan 4A Canaveral SLC41 Sigint FTO
Current Shuttle Processing Status
__________________________________
Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due
OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-93 Jan 28
OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-95 Oct 29
OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP
OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-88 Dec 3
.-------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| 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 |
'-------------------------------------------------------------------------'
Jonathan's Space Report
No. 369 1998 Aug 22 Cambridge, MA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Web site updates
----------------
I've updated my edited version of the United Nations Registry
of Space Objects, at
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/un/un.html
Member states of the UN are required to register space objects owned by
them; the accuracy and completeness of the information provided is
pretty spotty. The United States remains the state with the most errors
and omissions in its submissions; Mexico, Germany, Australia, and Brazil
are grossly overdue in updating their registrations. The US should be
registering INTELSAT's satellites, but does not; the United Kingdom
should be registering INMARSAT's satellites, but does not. Since 1991,
when the US last failed to register one of its classified satellites,
there is no evidence of any state deliberately failing to register a
satellite to avoid detection - the omissions seem to be due to
sloppiness.
I've also updated the geostationary log at
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/geo.html
including the addition of manufacturer's names and serial numbers for
Russian/Soviet geostationary satellites, as revealed in Novosti
Kosmonavtiki magazine. The full satellite catalog at
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/satcat
has also been updated and extensively revised.
Shuttle and Mir
---------------
Soyuz TM-28 was launched at 0943:10 UTC on Aug 13. The spacecraft,
production vehicle 7K-STM 11F732 No. 77, is built by RKK Energiya and
consists of a service module (priborno-agregatniy otsek), a descent
module (spuskaemiy apparat) and a hab module (bitovoy otsek). Crew on
this flight are air force officer Gennadiy Padalka, EO-26 crew
commander; RKK Energiya engineer Sergey Avdeev, flight engineer; and
cosmonaut-researcher Yuriy Baturin, who is the former head of the
Russian Federation Defence Council. Soyuz TM-28 docked at 1056 UTC on
Aug 15 with the rear (Kvant) port of the Mir space station, which was
vacated at 0928UTC on Aug 12 by the Progress M-39 cargo ship.
The EO-25 crew, Musabaev and Budarin, will land with Baturin on
Aug 25, leaving the EO-26 crew of Padalka and Avdeev on the station.
Recent Launches
---------------
It now appears that the advanced VORTEX-type satellites like the one
lost in the Titan 4A-20 explosion on Aug 12 are probably called MERCURY,
as suggested in COUNTDOWN magazine for Jan 1995. However, these code
names are usually changed as soon as they become public. The rumours
that the satellite was built by Hughes turn out to be pretty weak; TRW
or Lockheed Martin are more likely contractors. The communications
intelligence program has been operated since its first launch in 1968 by
the USAF program within the National Reconnaissance Office, on behalf of
the National Security Agency. A first generation series, CANYON, was
based on the Agena vehicle. A later improvement in 1972 had a heavier
but similar payload which separated from the Agena. This was followed by
the more advanced CHALET (renamed VORTEX when the name CHALET appeared
in the New York Times) and then by the new satellites probably called
MERCURY. I have reconstructed the launch history based on unclassified
documents and media reports:
Flight Codename Launch date Launch vehicle
No at launch
--- First generation, Agena attached ---
1 CANYON 1968 Aug 6 Atlas Agena D
2 CANYON 1969 Apr 13 Atlas Agena D
3 CANYON 1970 Sep 1 Atlas Agena D
4 CANYON 1971 Dec 4 Atlas Agena D (failed to orbit)
--- Improved version, Agena separated ---
5 CANYON 1972 Dec 20 Atlas Agena D
6 CANYON 1975 Jun 18 Atlas Agena D
7 CANYON 1977 May 23 Atlas Agena D
--- Second generation, Titan launch ---
8 CHALET 1978 Jun 10 Titan 3C
9 VORTEX 1979 Oct 1 Titan 3C
10 VORTEX 1981 Oct 31 Titan 3C
11 VORTEX 1984 Jan 31 Titan 34D/Transtage
12 VORTEX 1988 Sep 2 Titan 34D/Transtage (upper stage failed)
13 VORTEX 1989 May 10 Titan 34D/Transtage
--- Third generation ---
14 MERCURY 1994 Aug 27 Titan 4A/Centaur
15 MERCURY 1996 Apr 24 Titan 4A/Centaur
16 MERCURY 1998 Aug 12 Titan 4A/Centaur (failed to orbit)
Aviation Week reported that there were 15 payloads in the program
launched since the late 1970s, which is almost certainly wrong. They
also imply that the latest satellite is `the same' payload as the
earlier ones, but the larger Titan 4 payload shroud makes it almost
certain that the antenna is significantly larger than the CHALET/VORTEX
series, even if the basic satellite bus is the same.
In addition to the CANYON/CHALET/VORTEX/MERCURY program used for
communications intelligence, there was another geostationary signals
intelligence program led by the CIA program within the NRO. The Aviation
Week article suggests that those satellites are now called ORION, but that
name was `outed' some years ago and has probably been changed by now;
just as the MERCURY was referred to by analysts as `Advanced VORTEX'
when its true name was unknown, the latest satellites are probably best
referred to as `Advanced ORION' until their true codename is leaked.
Launch history of the CIA-originated geostationary sigint program (now
integrated with the rest of the NRO SIGINT series) is as follows:
--- First generation ---
1 RHYOLITE 1970 Jun 19 Atlas Agena D
2 RHYOLITE 1973 Mar 6 Atlas Agena D
3 AQUACADE 1977 Dec 11 Atlas Agena D
4 AQUACADE 1978 Apr 8 Atlas Agena D
--- Second generation ---
5 MAGNUM 1985 Jan 25 Shuttle/IUS
6 ORION 1989 Nov 23 Shuttle/IUS
--- Third generation? ---
7 ORION? 1995 May 14 Titan 4A/Centaur
8 ORION? 1998 May 9 Titan 4B/Centaur
The early satellites in this series were built by TRW, and the early
ones were compromised by spies in the mid-1970s. I don't know who builds
the ORION craft, but it may well still be TRW.
Meanwhile, salvage work on the Titan wreckage continues at the Cape,
but there's no word yet on the reason for the failure.
Another attempt to redock the Hikoboshi and Orihime satellites was
unsuccessful on Aug 13. Further attempts will be made, while for the
time being the two Japanese test satellites remain a few kilometers
apart.
Two more Iridium cellphone satellites were launched on Aug 19 from
Taiyuan in China. The CZ-2C two-stage launch vehicle placed the Smart
Dispenser bus in elliptical transfer orbit; the SD then fired to
circularize the orbit, deployed the satellites, and fired again to lower
its perigee and ensure rapid reentry. The new satellites, placed in
plane 2, include satellite production number 3, which was kept as a
ground test article until now.
Table of Recent Launches
------------------------
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Jul 1 0048 Molniya-3 Molniya-M Plesetsk Comsat 40A
Jul 3 1812 Nozomi M-5 Kagoshima Mars probe 41A
Jul 7 0315 Tubsat-N ) Shtil'-1 K-407,Barents Comsat 42A
Tubsat-N1 ) Comsat 42B
Jul 10 0630 Resurs-O1 No. 4 ) Zenit-2 Baykonur LC45 Rem. Sens. 43A
Fasat-Bravo ) Exptl. 43B
TMSAT ) Exptl. 43C
Gurwin Techsat 1B) Exptl. 43D
WESTPAC ) Geodesy 43E
SAFIR-2 ) Comsat 43F
Jul 18 0920 Sinosat CZ-3B Xichang LC2 Comsat 44A
Jul 28 0915 Kosmos-2360 Zenit-2 Baykonur LC45 Sigint 45A
Aug 2 1624 Orbcomm FM13 ) Pegasus XL Wallops Comsat 46A
Orbcomm FM14 ) Comsat 46B
Orbcomm FM15 ) Comsat 46C
Orbcomm FM16 ) Comsat 46D
Orbcomm FM17 ) Comsat 46E
Orbcomm FM18 ) Comsat 46F
Orbcomm FM19 ) Comsat 46G
Orbcomm FM20 ) Comsat 46H
Aug 12 1130 MERCURY Titan 4A Canaveral SLC41 Sigint FTO
Aug 13 0943 Soyuz TM-28 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Spaceship 47A
Aug 19 2301 Iridium SV03) CZ-2C/SD Taiyuan Comsat 48A
Iridium SV76) Comsat 48B
Current Shuttle Processing Status
_________________________________
Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due
OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-93 Jan 21?
OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-95 Oct 29
OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP
OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-88 Dec 3?
.-------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| 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 |
'-------------------------------------------------------------------------'
Jonathan's Space Report
No. 370 1998 Aug 30 Cambridge, MA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shuttle and Mir
---------------
Soyuz TM-27 undocked from Mir at 0205 UTC on Aug 25, with Talgat
Musabaev, Nikolai Budarin and Yuriy Baturin aboard. They landed on Aug
25 at 0523 UTC near Arkalyk in Kazakstan. Gennadiy Padalka and Sergey
Avdeev remain on the Mir complex.
Padalka and Avdeev boarded Soyuz TM-28 on Aug 27 and undocked
from the Kvant port on the Mir complex, redocking at 0607 UTC
at the front (-X) port of the PKhO transfer module. This leaves
the Kvant port free for redocking of the Progress M-39 cargo ship,
which undocked earlier in the month to free up a parking space.
Recent Launches
---------------
The first Delta III launch vehicle was lost 75 seconds into flight, 16
km above Cape Canaveral, on Aug 27. Boeing Expendable Launch Systems
(formerly McDonnell Douglas) builds the Delta III at Huntington Beach,
California with final assembly in Pueblo, Colorado. The standard Delta
II model is widely regarded as one of the world's most reliable launch
vehicles. While I expect that the Delta team will recover from this
failure and eventually bring the new rocket up to the same standard, the
loss of the initial vehicle is certainly a major blow for Boeing and for
the US space launch industry; although it represents less money than the
recent Titan failure, it will probably have a wider impact. The Delta
III consists of:
- Nine Alliant GEM-46 solid strapon motors, a scaled up version of the
GEM-40 motors used on the Delta II 7925. The graphite-epoxy case
motors use HTPB solid propellant. The motors are built in Alliant's
Bacchus, Utah factory; Alliant was formerly known as Hercules Powder
and built the upper stage for the first Delta back in 1960.
Three of the GEM-46 motors have thrust vector control (TVC), in which
movable nozzles are used to steer the rocket.
- The Delta III First Stage, similar to the Delta II first stage, but
with the fuel tank at the top reshaped to fit with the wider upper stage.
It uses the same LOX/kerosene RS-27A main engine as the Delta II.
- The Delta III Second Stage. This is an entirely new stage, and the
first entirely new high energy upper stage developed in the US since
the 1960s. It uses a Pratt and Whitney LOX/liquid hydrogen RL10B-2
engine with a long extensible nozzle built by SEP of France. The
RL10B-2, with a world record specific impulse of over 462 seconds,
is a new version of the venerable RL10 engine used in the
Lockheed Martin Astronautics Centaur, the other US high energy upper stage.
The liquid hydrogen tank for the Delta III second stage is build by
Mitsubishi of Japan, which also builds the liquid hydrogen stage of the
Japanese H-II rocket. The Delta III second stage is 4.0m in diameter,
much larger than the Delta II stage which still uses tankage derived
in part from the 1960-vintage Ablestar. However, the appearance of the
new stage, with the narrower LOX tank held inside an interstage and
the large nozzle assembly, is still reminiscent of the traditional
Delta stage.
- The 4.0 meter fairing, much larger than the old 10-foot Delta II fairing.
Boeing also builds the large Titan IV fairings, so has lots of experience
in this field.
Delta III has about twice the launch capacity of the Delta II. The
launch profile involves igniting the RS-27A main engine and six of the
GEM-46 solids at launch. At 80 seconds into flight the six solids
separate and the remaining three GEM-46 solids ignite. Initially it
appeared that the failure happened at exactly this time, raising the
possibility that Alliant's new GEM-46 graphite-epoxy case motors were
implicated in the failure. However, latest info is that pitch and yaw
control gave problems as early as 50 seconds into flight, the hydraulic
fluid ran out on the three GEM-46 with TVC steering, the vehicle
disintegrated around 72 seconds and its self-destruct signal fired.
Range safety sent its own destruct signal at 75 seconds for good
measure. The accident investigation now focusses on the rocket's
guidance.
The planned launch profile included a first burn of the second stage
engine from T+4min to T+13 min, leaving Delta in a 157 x 1176 km parking
orbit. After a 9 minute coast, the stage would burn again to enter a 185
x 35719 km x 27.5 deg geostationary transfer orbit, separating from the
Galaxy 10 satellite payload.
Galaxy 10, the payload destroyed in this launch, was a Hughes HS-601HP
satellite built by Hughes/El Segundo for Panamsat. The satellite carried
24 C-band and 24 Ku-band transponders to provide US/Caribbean coverage,
and was to have replaced the aging SBS-5 satellite at 123 deg West.
Launch mass of Galaxy 10 was 3876 kg; I haven't been able to find its
dry mass. Replenishing the Galaxy/PAS constellation is a high priority
for Panamsat following the loss of Galaxy 4 and problems with Galaxy 7.
Galaxy 11 is scheduled to go up on the first launch of another rocket,
the Sea Launch Zenit-3SL, early next year, and there are several PAS
satellites awaiting launch over the next year on Proton and Ariane.
Arianespace is back in action, after several months downtime when their
customers were late getting payloads ready. An Ariane 44P launched the
Singapore-Taiwan-1 (ST-1) satellite on Aug 25. The Matra Marconi Space
Eurostar 2000 class satellite will provide communications for Singapore
Telecom and for Chunghwa Telecom of Taiwan. On Aug 29, ST-1 was in a
24937 x 35735 km x 0.3 deg orbit, using its liquid apogee motor to
approach geostationary orbit.
Another International Launch Services commercial Proton, serial 383-01,
took off from Baykonur on Aug 30. It placed the Astra 2A satellite in a
220 x 36007 km x 51.6 deg transfer orbit with the first burn of its Blok
DM3 upper stage (a second burn is awaited at the time of writing). The
Astra 2A satellite is another Hughes HS-601 comsat, and is owned by
Societe Europeene de Satellites, based in Luxembourg. Luxembourg has not
registered any of the Astra satellites with the United Nations, in
violation of treaty requirements.
Table of Recent Launches
------------------------
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Jul 1 0048 Molniya-3 Molniya-M Plesetsk Comsat 40A
Jul 3 1812 Nozomi M-5 Kagoshima Mars probe 41A
Jul 7 0315 Tubsat-N ) Shtil'-1 K-407,Barents Comsat 42A
Tubsat-N1 ) Comsat 42B
Jul 10 0630 Resurs-O1 No. 4 ) Zenit-2 Baykonur LC45 Rem. Sens. 43A
Fasat-Bravo ) Exptl. 43B
TMSAT ) Exptl. 43C
Gurwin Techsat 1B) Exptl. 43D
WESTPAC ) Geodesy 43E
SAFIR-2 ) Comsat 43F
Jul 18 0920 Sinosat CZ-3B Xichang LC2 Comsat 44A
Jul 28 0915 Kosmos-2360 Zenit-2 Baykonur LC45 Sigint 45A
Aug 2 1624 Orbcomm FM13 ) Pegasus XL Wallops Comsat 46A
Orbcomm FM14 ) Comsat 46B
Orbcomm FM15 ) Comsat 46C
Orbcomm FM16 ) Comsat 46D
Orbcomm FM17 ) Comsat 46E
Orbcomm FM18 ) Comsat 46F
Orbcomm FM19 ) Comsat 46G
Orbcomm FM20 ) Comsat 46H
Aug 12 1130 MERCURY Titan 4A Canaveral SLC41 Sigint F02
Aug 13 0943 Soyuz TM-28 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Spaceship 47A
Aug 19 2301 Iridium SV03) CZ-2C/SD Taiyuan Comsat 48A
Iridium SV76) Comsat 48B
Aug 25 2307 ST-1 Ariane 44P Kourou Comsat 49A
Aug 27 0117 Galaxy X Delta III Canaveral SLC17B Comsat F03
Aug 30 0031 Astra 2A Proton Baykonur Comsat 50A
Current Shuttle Processing Status
_________________________________
Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due
OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-93 Jan 21?
OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-95 Oct 29
OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP
OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-88 Dec 3?
.-------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| 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 |
'-------------------------------------------------------------------------'
Jonathan's Space Report
No. 371 1998 Sep 5 Cambridge, MA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've corrected some errors in the geo.log file I posted last week.
Thanks to Tony Vitek for spotting the mistakes.
Shuttle and Mir
---------------
The Progress M-39 cargo ship redocked at the +X port of the
37KE (Kvant) module on the Mir complex. Soyuz TM-28 is docked
at the -X port on the PKhO BB (Base block transfer compartment).
Recent Launches
---------------
* North Korean satellite?
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (Choson Minjujuui In'min
Konghwaguk, North Korea) launched a Taepo Dong 1 missile at 0307 UTC on
Aug 31. North Korea now claims that a third stage on the missile placed
a small satellite in orbit. US sources so far have reported the
launching as a suborbital missile test, and have not tracked any
satellite in orbit. However, it's possible that a small satellite could
have been missed. The satellite is reportedly broadcasting Korean
propaganda songs on 27 MHz. I'm provisionally assuming the Korean
reports are correct despite the lack of confirmation from Space Command.
It seems probable that a satellite launch was at least attempted, but
we'll have to wait a few days before it's clear whether or not it did
reach orbit.
Launch site is given as Musudan-ri, Hamgyong Pukdo Province. My research
indicates this is Cape Musudan at 40.52N 129.45E. ("-ri" is a small
administrative district). The claimed orbit is 218 x 6978 km x 41 deg.
The Taepo Dong 1 (TD-1) reportedly consists of a Nodong 2 first stage
with a Scud-class second stage. The third (orbital) stage is probably a
small solid motor. No name has been given to the satellite in the North
Korean announcements.
The figures in the North Korean press release are inconsistent. They say
that launch was at 86 degrees azimuth, and the first stage fell 253 km
downrange at 40.85N 139.67E, the second stage 1646 km downrange at
40.22N 149.12E. The claim for the first stage is clearly wrong, it's
much more than 253 km from N Korea and practically on the beach in
Japan. I have two scenarios:
(1) The only error is that the first stage impact longitude should
be 129.67E, not 139.67E. Then the range to the second stage impact
point is correct, and the path is 86 degrees measuring east from south.
The first stage impact point is then just of Cape Musu-dan and the
launch site is unrelated to the cape, being at 126.2E 41.0N
near Manpojin right on the Chinese border. This seems really unlikely,
since the Korean statement about the location of the launching site
is so detailed.
(2) The launch site is at Cape Musu-dan, the azimuth is 86 deg
measuring east from north (the conventional way), the ranges
are correct but the latitudes and longitudes are all wrong. Then
I derive a first stage impact point of 40.7N 133.0E, and a second
stage impact point of 41.5N 152.1E. This seems much more likely,
except that I can't explain why the Korean latitude and longitude
figures would be so wrong.
Meanwhile, the Republic of Korea (Tae han Min'guk, South Korea) has not
yet got a satellite launch vehicle of its own, although it has several
satellites launched by other nations' rockets:
Korean name English name Launch date Launcher
KAIST (Korea Advanced Inst. of Sci. and Tech:)
Uribyol-1 KITSAT-OSCAR-23 1992 Aug 10 Ariane V52
Uribyol-2 KITSAT-OSCAR-25 1993 Sep 26 Ariane V59
Korea Telecom:
Mugunghwa 1 Koreasat 1 1995 Aug 5 Delta 228
Mugunghwa 2 Koreasat 2 1996 Jan 14 Delta 231
(Uribyol means 'our star'; Mugunghwa is the national flower
of Korea, the Sharon's rose.)
In addition, the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) has a
sounding rocket program using the single-stage solid fuel KSR-I sounding
rocket and the KSR-II, which uses two stages each based on the KSR-I.
There have been four launches to date from the Anhueng launch site in
Ch'ungch'ong Namdo province, at 36.41N 126.10E.
KSR-I-1 1993 Jun 4 Ozone, 39 km
KSR-I-2 1993 Sep 1 Ozone, 49 km
KSR-II-1 1997 Jul 9 Ozone/ionosphere/X-ray astron, 150 km?
KSR-II-2 1998 Jun 11 Ozone/ionosphere/X-ray astron, 137 km
Thanks to Kim Jhoon and Park Jeongjoo of KARI for their generous
help in providing details of the South Korean space program.
I would like to particularly encourage my readers in South Korea (or for
that matter North Korea, in the unlikely event I have any there!) to
pass on to me any corrections they may have to this report.
* ETS-7
Meanwhile, the ETS-7 Orihime and Hikoboshi satellites have successfully
redocked, following attitude control software problems which threatened
the mission. This is very good news for NASDA, the Japanese applications
space agency.
* Astra 2A
Astra 2A's Blok DM3 stage delivered the payload to a 7932 x 35991 km x
15.6 deg transfer orbit following a successful second burn on Aug 30.
Astra 2A's on-board Marquardt R-4D bipropellant liquid apogee engine
will be used for the rest of the journey to geostationary orbit.
Table of Recent Launches
------------------------
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Aug 2 1624 Orbcomm FM13 ) Pegasus XL Wallops Comsat 46A
Orbcomm FM14 ) Comsat 46B
Orbcomm FM15 ) Comsat 46C
Orbcomm FM16 ) Comsat 46D
Orbcomm FM17 ) Comsat 46E
Orbcomm FM18 ) Comsat 46F
Orbcomm FM19 ) Comsat 46G
Orbcomm FM20 ) Comsat 46H
Aug 12 1130 MERCURY Titan 4A Canaveral SLC41 Sigint F02
Aug 13 0943 Soyuz TM-28 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Spaceship 47A
Aug 19 2301 Iridium SV03) CZ-2C/SD Taiyuan Comsat 48A
Iridium SV76) Comsat 48B
Aug 25 2307 ST-1 Ariane 44P Kourou Comsat 49A
Aug 27 0117 Galaxy X Delta III Canaveral SLC17B Comsat F03
Aug 30 0031 Astra 2A Proton Baykonur Comsat 50A
Aug 31 0307 - Taepo Dong Musudan Test U01
Current Shuttle Processing Status
_________________________________
Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due
OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-93 Jan 21?
OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-95 Oct 29
OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP
OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-88 Dec 3?
MLP2/RSRM-68/ET-98 VAB Bay 1 STS-95
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| 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 |
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--- DRAFT at latest.html ---
Jonathan's Space Report - Next Issue
This is the draft of the NEXT issue of JSR. WARNING:
Information on this page is up to date but not well
checked, and may include wild rumours and downright
nonsense. For the CURRENT issue of JSR, click here
Jonathan's Space Report
No. 372 draft 1998 Sep 10 Cambridge, MA
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Shuttle and Mir
---------------
Recent Launches
---------------
* Kwangmyongsong 1: the mystery continues
The mystery of the North Korean launch continues. It now seems unlikely
that the satellite reached orbit. A Russian press report said that
Russian sources confirmed the satellite, but just repeated the North
Korean figures, so cannot be considered as an independent source.
Comments from US sources imply that a third stage burn was observed, but
that nothing was later spotted on radar, suggesting that the satellite
ended up falling into the Pacific instead of reaching orbit. I'll try
and keep this updated.
The KCNA (North Korean news agency) informs me that the name of the
satellite is "Kwangmyongsong No 1", meaning "Bright Light Star". They
also confirm that there was a typo in the initial press release - the
impact site of the first stage was at 132deg 40'E, a much more
reasonable value. A Korean colleague informs me that Nodong means
'Labour', as in 'Korean Labour Party'. and Taepo means `cannon'.
*Zenit fails again
The Zenit launch vehicle, built by KB Yuzhnoe of Dnepropetrovsk,
Ukraine, continued its mixed record with a failure in its first major
commercial launch. Twelve Globalstar communications satellites were lost
when the Zenit guidance system malfunctioned 4.5 minutes after launch
and the second stage and payloads impacted Siberia. The twelve
satellites were stacked in three tiers of four each inside the Zenit
fairing. The second stage engines shut down and the second stage and
payloads impacted somewhere in Siberia. The failure happened at T+272s,
just before fairing separation. I assume that fairing separation
happened anyway, I don't think there was a range safety destruct.
The Globalstar comsats are built by Alenia (Torino) and SS/Loral (Palo
Alto) for Globalstar Corp. Eight Globalstars are already in orbit;
there is one more Delta launch scheduled and several more Zenit
flights planned. Total constellation size will be 48 satellites.
Counting the North Korean launch, this makes four launch failures
in a single month - not a good time for the space launch industry.
* Iridium launch
Boeing's Delta II made a successful flight on Sep 8, placing five
Iridium communications satellites in parking orbit after launch
from Vandenberg AFB.
Table of Recent Launches
------------------------
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Aug 2 1624 Orbcomm FM13 ) Pegasus XL Wallops Comsat 46A
Orbcomm FM14 ) Comsat 46B
Orbcomm FM15 ) Comsat 46C
Orbcomm FM16 ) Comsat 46D
Orbcomm FM17 ) Comsat 46E
Orbcomm FM18 ) Comsat 46F
Orbcomm FM19 ) Comsat 46G
Orbcomm FM20 ) Comsat 46H
Aug 12 1130 MERCURY Titan 4A Canaveral SLC41 Sigint F02
Aug 13 0943 Soyuz TM-28 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Spaceship 47A
Aug 19 2301 Iridium SV03) CZ-2C/SD Taiyuan Comsat 48A
Iridium SV76) Comsat 48B
Aug 25 2307 ST-1 Ariane 44P Kourou Comsat 49A
Aug 27 0117 Galaxy X Delta III Canaveral SLC17B Comsat F03
Aug 30 0031 Astra 2A Proton Baykonur Comsat 50A
Aug 31 0307 Kwangmyongsong 1 Taepo Dong Musudan Test F04
Sep 8 2113 Iridium SV77) Delta 7920 Vandenberg SLC2 Comsat 51E
Iridium SV79) Comsat 51D
Iridium SV80) Comsat 51C
Iridium SV81) Comsat 51B
Iridium SV82) Comsat 51A
Sep 9 2029 Globalstar FM5 ) Zenit-2 Baykonur Comsat F05
Globalstar FM7 )
Globalstar FM9 )
Globalstar FM10)
Globalstar FM11)
Globalstar FM12)
Globalstar FM13)
Globalstar FM16)
Globalstar FM17)
Globalstar FM18)
Globalstar FM20)
Globalstar FM21)
Current Shuttle Processing Status
_________________________________
Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due
OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-93 Jan 21?
OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-95 Oct 29
OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP
OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-88 Dec 3?
MLP2/RSRM-68/ET-98 VAB Bay 1 STS-95
.-------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| 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 |
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