Jonathan's Space Report No. 166 1993 Aug 24 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Shuttle ------- Discovery's main engines have now been changed. Columbia was moved to the VAB on Aug 11 and mated to the external tank on Aug 13. Meanwhile, the solids for STS-60 have been removed from the mobile launcher since that mission has been delayed to next year. The Discovery STS-51 launch is now set for Sep 10 at 1138 UTC. Mir --- The Expedition 14 crew of Vasiliy Tsibliev and Aleksandr Serebrov continue in orbit aboard the Mir complex. Progress M-17 undocked on Aug 11 at 1537 UTC from the Kvant rear port. Progress M-19 was launched on Aug 10 and 2224 UTC and docked at the Kvant rear port at 0000 UTC on 13 Aug. Other Missions ------------------ Mars Observer was due to enter orbit on Aug 24. At the time of writing (about 1 hour before the MOI burn was due) there was still no contact with the probe. Contact was lost on Aug 21 when the spacecraft was due to pressurize its fuel tanks for the Mars Orbit Insertion burn. There is a possibility that the MOI burn will execute correctly and that MO will switch back to its low gain, omnidirectional antenna in a few days and restore contact with Earth. But right now, things do not look very encouraging, although NASA are maintaining that MO will likely get into orbit OK. Galileo is approaching encounter with minor planet (243) Ida. Flyby will be on Aug 28 at 1622 UT. This is Galileo's second and last minor planet encounter. (The first was with (951) Gaspra. Unfortunately there are no plans for a flyby with the newly named (4589).) The experimental reusable suborbital McDonnell Douglas DC-X rocket made its first test flight on Aug 19, to an altitude of about 50 m. Takeoff and landing were at the White Sands Missile Range. On Aug 21, the same day as the Mars Observer failure, the newly launched NOAA-13 satellite stopped transmitting. NOAA-13 had been turned over to NOAA for checkout on Aug 12. It looks like the solar arrays stopped talking to the batteries and the satellite lost power. The Hipparcos satellite was turned off this week; it stopped returning science data in June. The satellite gathered data for the best catalog yet of star positions and motions, which will form a basic astronomical dataset for decades to come. The catalog won't be ready for a few years. Hipparcos got off to a rocky start in 1989 when an apogee motor failure left it in transfer orbit, but heroic software rewrites allowed the mission to get its data. Launches -------- Date Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Jul 1 1433 Soyuz TM-17 Soyuz 2 Baykonur Spaceship 43A Jul 8 0715 Kosmos-2258 Tsiklon-M Baykonur EORSAT 44A Jul 14 1640 Kosmos-2259 Soyuz Plesetsk Recon 45A Jul 19 2204 DSCS III Atlas AC-104 Canaveral Comsat 46A Jul 22 0845 Kosmos-2260 Soyuz Plesetsk Remote sens. 47A Jul 22 2258 Hispasat 1B ) Ariane 44L Kourou Comsat 48A Insat 2B ) Comsat 48B Aug 2 1959 Adv NOSS 3? Titan 403 Vandenberg Recon FTO Aug 4 0052 Molniya-3 Molniya Plesetsk Comsat 49A Aug 8 1002 NOAA 13 Atlas 34E Vandenberg Weather 50A Aug 10 1500? Kosmos-2261 Molniya Plesetsk Early Warn 51A Aug 10 2224 Progress M-19 Soyuz Baykonur Cargo 52A Reentries --------- Jul 12 Resurs-F1 Landed in Kazakhstan? Jul 18 MSTI-1 Reentered Jul 22 Soyuz TM-16 Landed in Kazakhstan Jul 25 Kosmos-2259 Landed Aug 5 Kosmos-2260 Landed Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission OV-102 Columbia VAB Bay 3 STS-58 OV-103 Discovery LC39B STS-51 OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-61 ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/RSRM-34/ET-57/OV-102 VAB Bay 3 STS-58 ML2/ VAB Bay 1 STS-60 ML3/RSRM-33/ET-59/OV-103 LC39B STS-51 .-----------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS4 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@urania.harvard.edu | | USA | | '-----------------------------------------------------------------------------'