[JSR] Jonathan's Space Report, No. 656
Jonathan McDowell
jcm at planet4589.org
Wed Apr 11 22:38:21 EDT 2012
Jonathan's Space Report
No. 656 2012 Apr 12 Somerville, MA USA
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Space Station
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Expedition 30 continues with Soyuz TMA-22 docked at Poisk and Soyuz
TMA-03M docked to the Rassvet module. Ex-30 commander is Dan Burbank;
flight engineers 1 to 5 are Anton Shkaplerov, Anatoliy Ivanishin, Oleg
Kononenko, Andre Kuipers, Don Pettit. The Progress M-14M cargo ship
is docked at the Pirs module.
The third European ATV (Automated Transfer Vehicle), the Edoardo Amaldi,
was launched on Mar 23. Ariane vehicle 553 placed the ATV with the EPS
upper stage in a -1260 x 140 km trajectory at 0443 UTC; the EPC core
stage impacted the eastern Atlantic. A first EPS stage burn put the
mission in a 136 x 256 km orbit at 0451 UTC, and a second burn at 0533
UTC circularized the orbit at around 260 x 260 km. The EPS separated and
was deorbited over the South Pacific at around 0700 UTC. On Mar 25 the
ATV-3 was in a 274 x 294 km x 51.6 deg orbit. ATV 3 is named after
Edoardo Amaldi (1908-1989) who was a co-founder of CERN and of ESA's
precursor ESRO. It has a mass of 19714 kg. ATV 3 docked with the aft
Zvezda port on the Station at 2231 UTC on Mar 28. On Mar 31 at 2154 UTC
the ATV OCS engines were used to perform a small 1.7 km reboost of the
Station's orbit; a larger reboost on Apr 5 put the Station in a 387 x
398 km x 51.6 deg orbit.
North Korean launch
-------------------
The Korean Committee of Space Technology of the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea (Choson Minjujuui Inmin Kongwaguk, otherwise known as
North Korea) has announced its intention to launch the Unha-3 rocket
with the Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite payload from the Sohae launch site
at Tongch'ang-dong. Kwangmyongsong-3 is a 100 kg box-shaped satellite
1.4 x 0.6 x 0.7m in size with body-mounted solar panels. Unha-3 is a
three stage vehicle; stage 1 is 2.40m in diameter, stage 2 is about 1.5m
in diameter, and stage 3 is about 1.2m in diameter. Unha-3 seems almost
identical to Unha-2, except that the third stage seems to be slightly
stretched. The first two stages fly south on an azimuth that would
lead to an 88 degree inclination orbit; the third stage is expected
to make a yawed burn that if successful will result in a 500 km, 97.4 deg
inclination sun-synchronous orbit. The 2009 Unha-2 launch was
on an eastward rather than southward azimuth, from a different
launch site, and suffered a failure of the third stage to ignite
which resulted in payload impact in the Pacific.
The accuracy of the Unha-3 is likely to be poor by the standards of
the launch vehicles of experienced spacefaring nations. This has raised
some discussion about the definition of sun-synchronous orbit: how close
to the mathematically nominal critical inclination (which also depends on
altitude) do you need to be to count as sun-synchronous. I discuss
this at http://planet4589.org/space/log/stats/sso.html and conclude
that precession rates of 0.94 to 1.03 deg/day, corresponding to an
orbital plane drift of one hour per year or less, constitute a reasonable
criterion for sun-synchronicity.
Launch is expected within the next week.
Ekspress AM-4
--------------
In August 2011 a Proton-M/Briz-M delivered the Ekspress AM-4 spacecraft
to an incorrect orbit of 697 x 20239 km x 51.3 deg. Ekspress AM-4 was an
Astrium/Khrunichev Eurostar 3000 satellite with L, C, Ku and Ka band
communications payloads for the Russian company Kosmicheskaya Svyaz. On
around Mar 1 the satellite's apogee began to decrease slightly,
presumably due to tests of the propulsion system. Between Feb 27 and Mar
24 the orbit was slowly and steadily lowered from 651 x 20410 km to 659
x 20320 km x 51.1 deg. On 2012 Mar 25 the Ekspress AM-4 spacecraft was
deorbited on command from the Centre Spatiale de Toulouse. An engine
burn from 0945 to 1035 UTC over the southern Indian Ocean, as Ekspress
AM-4 was approaching apogee, lowered the satellite's perigee with a
resulting orbit of around (-2000 to -1000) x 20320 km, and it reentered
over the N Pacific near 40N 175W at around 1332 UTC. The Briz-M stage
from the launch remains in a 1008 x 20307 km x 51.1 deg orbit.
Intelsat IS-22
--------------
Proton-M vehicle 93528 with Briz-M stage 99537 was launched from
Baykonur on Mar 25 carrying a 6200 kg Boeing 702MP spacecraft, Intelsat
IS-22. IS-22 has a C- and Ku-band commercial communications payload as
well as a UHF communications payload for the Australian Defense Forces.
This mission was the first Proton launch to use a supersynchronous
transfer orbit. The five Briz-M burns raised the orbit from -495 x 170
km x 51.5 deg to 173 x 173 km x 51.5 deg at 1226 UTC, to 295 x 5996 km x
51.0 deg at 1420 UTC, to 363 x 14407 km x 50.8 deg at 1644 UTC, to 433 x
69497 km x 50.4 deg at 1654 UTC on Mar 25, and finally to 3783 x 64892
km x 28.4 deg at 0328 UTC on Mar 26. This orbit strategy allows a more
massive payload to be carried. By Apr 10 burns by IS-22's own propulsion
system had lowered it to a 35783 x 36531 km x 0.1 deg orbit drifting
west over the Indian Ocean.
Oko
----
Russia launched an Oko-1 (US-KMO, 71Kh6) early warning satellite into
geosynchronous orbit on Mar 30, using the final Proton-K (8K82K) launch
vehicle (serial 41018 with upper stage Blok DM-2 No. 117L, according to
information on nasaspaceflight.com). The satellite was given the code
name Kosmos-2479. On Apr 10 the satellite was in a 35697 x 35902 km x
2.3 deg over longitude 80.1E.
Apstar 7
--------
A Chinese Chang Zheng 3B/E vehicle flew to supersynchronous
geostationary transfer orbit from Xichang on Mar 31 carrying a
commercial payload. Apstar 7 is a Thales Alenia/Cannes Spacebus 4000C2
for the Hong-Kong-based APT (Asia Pacific Telecom) Satellite company. On
Apr 1 Apstar 7 was in a 2328 x 50123 km x 27.4 deg orbit; as of Apr 11
more recent orbital data was not available.
NROL-25 (USA 234)
------------------
A secret National Reconnaissance Office satellite went aloft from
Vandenberg AFB's Space Launch Complex 6 on Apr 3, aboard a Delta 4
Medium+ (5,2) vehicle. Ted Molczan and other analysts believe this
satellite is the second FIA Radar mission, following
NROL-41/USA-25/2010-46A. It was quickly picked up by hobbyist observers
in a 1068 x 1107 km x 123.0 deg retrograde orbit. The
five-meter-diameter Delta second stage was deorbited on the first
revolution and impacted the ocean south of Australia.
The spacecraft has been given the cover name USA 234 - implying that the
MUOS satellite doesn't get a USA number for some reason.
Suborbital launches
--------------------
On Mar 22 NASA launched the third flight of CalTech's CIBER instrument to
measure the extragalactic near-infrared background.
On Mar 27 five sounding rockets were launched from Wallops Island to
study the upper atmosphere jet stream by releasing chemical tracers at
different altitudes. The ATREX (Anomalous Transport Rocket Experiment)
project used Terrier boosters with Oriole, Improved Malemute and
Improved Orion sustainer stages. As far as I know the last time so many
suborbital missions were launched within five minutes from Wallops was
on 1970 Mar 7 when ten rockets were launched by NASA and AFCRL to study
a solar eclipse.
On Apr 5 UP Aerospace launched SpaceLoft SL-6 from the New Mexico
spaceport carrying technology payloads for the US Air Force Operationally
Responsive Space office.
In the last JSR I mentioned the Feb 25 Minuteman III launch; the correct
name of the launch agency is actually US Air Force Global Strike Command.
Note
-----
Thanks to Ted Molczan for providing the Soyuz TM-5 data I requested
in the last issue.
Table of Recent (orbital) Launches
----------------------------------
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Mar 23 0434 Edoardo Amaldi Ariane 5ES-ATV Kourou ELA3 Cargo 10A
Mar 25 1210 Intelsat IS-22 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC200/39 Comms 11A
Mar 30 0549 Kosmos-2479 Proton-K/DM-2 Baykonur LC81/24 EarlyWarn 12A
Mar 31 1027 Apstar 7 Chang Zheng 3B/E Xichang LC2 Comms 13A
Apr 3 2312 NROL-25 Delta 4M+(5,2) Vandenberg SLC6 Radar 14A
Table of Recent (suborbital) Launches
----------------------------------
Date UT Payload/Flt Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission Apogee/km
Mar 19 1405 REXUS 12 Imp. Orion ESRANGE Micrograv 82
Mar 22 0900 NASA 36.277UG Black Brant IX White Sands IR Astron 320?
Mar 27 0858 NASA 45.004UE Terrier Oriole Wallops Atm. Sci 375?
Mar 27 0859 NASA 46.002UE Terrier Malemute Wallops Atm. Sci 200?
Mar 27 0900 NASA 41.097UE Terrier Orion Wallops Atm. Sci 157?
Mar 27 0902 NASA 46.003UE Terrier Malemute Wallops Atm. Sci 254?
Mar 27 0903 NASA 41.098UE Terrier Orion Wallops Atm. Sci 169?
Apr 5 1418 SL-6 SpaceLoft XL Spaceport America Tech 117
.-------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 |
| Somerville MA 02143 | inter : planet4589 at gmail |
| USA | jcm at cfa.harvard.edu |
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