[JSR] Jonathan's Space Report, No. 693

Jonathan McDowell jcm at planet4589.org
Sun Feb 9 01:17:30 EST 2014


Jonathan's Space Report - **** 25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION ****
No. 693                                                2014 Feb 9    Somerville, MA
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

International Space Station
---------------------------

The Cygnus Orb-1 mission was launched on Jan 9. This was the first
launch of Orbital's Antares 120 variant, with a more powerful ATK Castor
30B second stage replacing the Castor 30 used on earlier flights.
The Cygnus cargo ship SS C. Gordon Fullerton, with an orbit insertion
mass of approximately 4750 kg, entered a 221 x 259 km x 51.6 deg orbit
to begin its rendezvous sequence with ISS.

The Gordon Fullerton's pressurized cargo module contains 1465 kg of cargo for ISS
including two bags with a total mas of 152 kg containing a set of cubesats
- a remarkable set of 28 Dove 3U Earth-observing cubesats (about 5 kg each)
  for Planet Labs and five 1U/2U cubesats:

     2U Ardusat-2, for NanoSatisfi Inc., carries an Arduino processor which
        will run experiments by hobbyists and students. 
     1U SkyCube-1 carries VGA cameras, an amateur radio transponder and a 
        deorbit drag balloon, for Southern Stars Group LLC of San Francisco.
     1U UAP-SAT, a test satellite from Universidad Alas Peruanas, Lima, a
        Peruvian aviation university.
     1U LituanicaSat-1, a test satellite from a Lithuanian group centered at
        Kauno technology university in Kaunas. It is named after an airplane
        used for a historic 1933 transatlantic flight.
     1U Litsat-1, a test satellite from the Lithuanian Space Association
        (Lietuvos Kosmoso Asociacija) in Vilnius.

The first of the cubesats are being prepared for deployment from the Kibo
module.


The Gordon Fullerton arrived at 250 metres from ISS at 1001 UTC Jan 12,
and moved in to the 10m capture position by 1059 UTC. It was captured
by the Canadarm-2 at 1108 UTC and berthed on the Harmony module's nadir
port at 1305 UTC.

On Jan 27 Kotov and Ryazanskiy performed spacewalk VKD-37a, a rerun of
December's attempt to install the UrtheCast video cameras outside the Zvezda
module. This time the cameras were left outside, and the high res camera
was returning telemetry; the medium res camera, however, is still not working.
The Pirs module hatch was open at 1400 UTC and closed at 2008 UTC.

The Progress M-20M cargo ship undocked from the Pirs module at 1621 UTC
on Feb 3. On Feb 5 the replacement Progress M-22M cargo ship was
launched from Baykonur on ISS mission 54P and it docked with Pirs at
2222 UTC that day. Progress M-21M remains docked at the Zvezda module. 

The International Space Station, with a mass of around 413 metric tons including
the docked vehicles, was in a 413 x 419 km x 51.7 deg low Earth orbit on Feb 8.

Gaia
----

The Gaia astronomical observatory made the first of two critical L2
insertion burns on Jan 7. Thrusters fired from 1858 to 2014 UTC. After a second
burn on Jan 14, Gaia entered a 263000 x 707000 x 370000 km
Lissajous orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 point. Gaia's CCDs are working
and observations of stars are underway.

GSAT-14
-------

India launched its Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) on Jan
5, placing the GSAT-14 satellite in a 182 x 35755 km x 19.4 deg
geostationary transfer orbit. By Jan 7 its onboard apogee engine had
placed it in a 32543 x 35741 km x 0.7 deg subsynchronous orbit on the
way to GEO and by Feb 4 it was on station at 73.9E.  GSAT-14 carries C
and Ku band comms payloads, and Ka-band beacons for a propagation study.

Thaicom 6
---------

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket on its second successful geostationary
transfer orbit insertion mission on Jan 6. The initial burn of the
Falcon 9 second stage reached a 197 x 497 km parking orbit per
spaceflightnow.com, and a second burn at 2233 UTC sent the Thaicom 6
payload to a 375 x 90039 km x 22.5 deg supersync transfer orbit.
By Feb 3 the satellite had manuevered to a 35784 x 35789 km x 0.1 deg
geostationary orbit over 78.4 deg East. The Falcon 9 second stage
remains in a 348 x 89584 km x 22.0 deg orbit.

Thaicom 6 is an Orbital Star satellite with Ku and C-band payloads for 
coverage of SE Asia, Africa and the Middle East. It is owned by Thaicom Plc
of Bangkok. Launch mass was 3016 kg.

TDRS 12
-------

A new NASA Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, TDRS L, was launched on
Jan 24 by an Atlas V. On reaching operational orbit it was renamed TDRS
12. The TDRS satellites provide space-to-space relays, channelling high
bandwidth data from spacecraft to the ground.

TDRS 12 is the second replenishment satellite in the third generation of
the TDRS system.  TDRS 1 to 7 were built by TRW (now Northrop Grumman)
and launched between 1983 and 1995 on the Shuttle. TDRS 8 to 10 were
built using the Hughes HS-601 bus, now the Boeing BSS-601, and launched in 2000-2002.
TDRS 11, 12 and the forthcoming TDRS M use a high power version of the same
bus, the BSS-601HP.

On Feb 4 TDRS 12 was in a 35780 x 35795 km x 7.0 deg inclined geostationary
orbit over 150.0 deg West.

Ariane
------

Arianespace launched vehicle 572, an Ariane 5ECA model, to geostationary
transfer orbit on Feb 8. It carried two satellites - ABS 2 for
Hong-Kong-based Asia Broadcast Satellite, and Athena-Fidus. The latter
is a joint French/Italian military communications satellite built by
Thales Alenia/Cannes and operated by Telespazio for the Delegation
Generale de l'Armement and the Agenzia Spaziale Italiano.

Cassini
-------

The Cassini probe made its T-97 and T-98 flybys of Titan at 2201 UTC on
Jan 1 (at 1400 km) and at 1914 UTC on Feb 2 (at 1236 km). The T-99 flyby
is scheduled for 1628 UTC on Mar 6. As a result of these two latest
flybys Cassini's Saturnocentric orbit was changed from 1.18 x 2.64
million km x 51.3 deg to 0.92 x 2.84 million km x 48.1 deg.


Editorial - a quarter century of Jonathan's Space Report
---------------------------------------------------------

The first issue of JSR was sent to an internal email distribution  at my
then and current place of work, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics, on 1989 Jan 30, a quarter century ago. This was shortly
after I had moved from the UK to the USA. As a teenager in England I had
been lucky enough to attend meetings of the British Interplanetary
Society and learn from experts such as Phillip Clark, Anthony Kenden,
and Rex Hall, whose names will be familiar to readers of BIS magazines.
A family friend at the Royal Aircraft Establishment had put me on the
distribution for the RAE Tables of Earth Satellites at age 15, and I
spent my evenings with a pocket calculator plotting orbits of Soviet spy
satellites instead of studying for my A Level exams. I nevertheless made it
in to Cambridge, and emerged eight years later with a decent grounding
in maths, astrophysics and computer science. This lets me combine public
information on space missions with my own independent number-crunching
of the orbital data, and I try and make sure that each issue of JSR
includes at least some original material. 

JSR began as a weekly report, but has become irregular and closer to 
monthly as my free time has shrunk. The distribution methods for JSR
changed from email to ftp, Usenet, and then WWW; JSR now also has an
associated social-media channel http://twitter.com/planet4589.  But the
JSR content remains as plain text (so that I can prepare it rapidly), and
the focus remains unchanged: a concise summary of human and robotic
extraterrestrial activity, aimed at a technically literate audience. My
goal is to provide a journal of record for the space age, sufficiently
objective and international in outlook that readers from all countries
and of all political leanings can rely on it. I began it because I felt
there was a need for such an information source. As the saying goes, if
you want it done right...

The scope of JSR is intended to cover robotic and human spaceflight
activity; I do not, in general, cover prelaunch planning and
preparation, ground control, budgets and finances or other terrestrial
activities associated with  spaceflight (I'm only one person and have to
draw a line somewhere!) The JSR and the associated planet4589.org
website have no budget and accept no advertising; I write the newsletter
and site on my own time with my own personal resources to ensure its
editorial independence, and make it freely available as a service to the
aerospace community and the historical record. The content of the report
may be freely reproduced as long as my authorship and the URL of the
planet4589.org website are noted.

Let me repeat from the 10th anniversary issue: I would like to take this
opportunity to express my thanks to all of you who have  been kind
enough to send me information, corrections and encouragement over the
years. I hope you will continue to find JSR a useful source of
information!




Table of Recent (orbital) Launches 
 ----------------------------------
Date UT       Name            Launch Vehicle        Site            Mission    INTL.  

Jan  5 1048   GSAT-14            GSLV             Sriharikota SLP   Comms        01A
Jan  6 2206   Thaicom 6          Falcon 9 v1.1    Canaveral SLC40   Comms        02A
Jan  9 1807   Cygnus Orb-1       Antares 120      Wallops MARS 0A   Cargo        03A
Jan 24 0233   TDRS 12            Atlas V 401      Canaveral SLC41   Comms        04A
Feb  5 1623   Progress M-22M     Soyuz-U          Baykonur LC1/5    Cargo        05A
Feb  6 2130   ABS 2        )     Ariane 5ECA      Kourou ELA3       Comms        06A
              Athena-Fidus )                                                     06B

Table of Recent (suborbital) Launches
----------------------------------

Date UT     Payload/Flt Name  Launch Vehicle  Site                   Mission    Apogee/km

Dec 14        Kavoshgar Pazhuhesh  Shahab-1        Semnan           Bio           120
Dec 17 1236   GT210GM          Minuteman III       Vandenberg LF04  Op. test     1300?
Dec 23 1128   Agni RV          Agni 3              Chandipur        Test          350
Dec 24 0700   Yars RV-1 )      Yars                Plesetsk         Test         1000?
              Yars RV-2 )
              Yars RV-3 )
              Yars RV-4 )
Dec 27 1730   Topol' RV        Topol'              Kapustin Yar     Test         1000?
Jan  3        Arrow KV         Arrow 3             Palmachim        Test          100?
Jan 15 0909   FTX-18 target    Terrier Orion       Wallops          Target        130?
Jan 15 0909   FTX-18 target    Terrier Orion       Wallops          Target        130?
Jan 15 0909   FTX-18 target    Terrier Orion       Wallops          Target        130?
Jan 20 0522   Agni 4 RV        Agni 4              Chandipur IC4    Test          900?

.-------------------------------------------------------------------------.
|  Jonathan McDowell                 |                                    |
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|  USA                               |  twitter: @planet4589              |
|                                                                         |
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