Jonathan's Space Report No. 282 1996 Mar 29 Cambridge, MA -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Apologies to those on the email list for the spurious messages, you shouldn't get any more of these. The list setup program, which should have configured the list to prevent other people sending to it, had a bug in it, which has now been fixed. Thanks to all of you who did NOT immediately send `er, what's going on?' followup messages to the whole list - I've seen that sort of problem exponentiate rapidly on other lists! Shuttle and Mir --------------- OV-104 Atlantis has been launched on the third Mir docking mission, STS-76. Liftoff was on Mar 22 at 0813:04 UTC. Docking with the Mir station was accomplished at 0234 UTC on Mar 24; the docking ring was retracted for hard dock at 0247 UTC. The Atlantis crew entered Mir a few hours later, and by the following day Lucid's Soyuz reentry seat had been transferred to Soyuz TM-23, allowing Lucid to become part of the Mir EO-21 crew. As part of the STS-76 crew, Lucid was Mission Specialist 4; as part of EO-21, she will have the callsign Skif-3 and I'm guessing that she is designated Bortinzhener-2 (Flight Engineer 2) rather than Kosmonavt-Issledovatel' (Research Engineer), but I'm not sure. (Can anyone help on this one? Maxim?) On Mar 27 astronauts Linda Godwin and Rich Clifford made an EVA from the airlock in the Tunnel Adapter between Atlantis's middeck cabin and the Orbiter Docking System. Using the NASA times which refer to use of battery power, the spacewalk began at 0636 UTC and ended at 1238 UTC; I don't have the depressurization/repressurization times since I was too busy looking at the comet. The astronauts moved the four Mir Environmental Experiment Payloads from the rear of the Orbiter cargo bay to the exterior of Mir's Docking Module, and removed a television camera from the Docking Module exterior. The Atlantis astronauts returned to the Shuttle and closed the hatches at around 1300 UTC on Mar 28. They undocked at 0108 UTC on Mar 29, and flew slowly around the complex, separating at 0208 UTC. Landing is due for 1257 UTC on Mar 30, shortening the mission by one day compared to the original plan. The Mir/Atlantis complex is in a 390 x 397 km x 51.6 deg orbit. The Great (?) Comet of 1996 --------------------------- Meanwhile, Comet C/1996 B2 Hyakutake, which reached perigee of 15 million km on Mar 25, is easily visible to the naked eye even in the partly cloudy, bright skies of Cambridge, MA. As seen from the darker skies of Walden Pond on Mar 27, the comet's tail stretched from Polaris most of the way to the pointer stars of the Great Bear. This is the Real Thing - if you've only seen it from an urban area, make sure to catch it from a rural dark site in the next few days. Brian Marsden of the IAU Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams says *he* doesn't consider this a Great Comet in the historically used sense, and we should hang on for Hale-Bopp next year, but *I'm* impressed nevertheless. Obituary -------- Former astronaut Col. Robert Overmyer, 59, was killed on Mar 22 in Duluth, Minnesota, while the prototype Cirrus Design VK30 small airplane he was flying went into an unrecoverable spin. Overmyer was selected as a USAF Manned Orbiting Laboratory astronaut in 1966, and transferred to NASA in 1969. He was pilot of STS-5/Columbia, and commander of mission 51-B/Challenger (Spacelab 3). Recent Launches --------------- A Rockwell Block IIA Navstar Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite was launched on Mar 28. It will be placed in plane C. I don't have the SVN number of the satellite yet; Navstar SVN 30, 33, 38 and 40 remained to be launched in the Block IIA series. Launch was by a McDonnell Douglas Delta 7925, which placed the satellite in a 192 x 20269 km x 34.9 deg transfer orbit. A solid Thiokol Star 37 apogee motor will circularize the orbit at 20000 km. Intelsat 707 reached its 1.0 deg E geostationary position on Mar 22. The Skipper satellite, launched last December, reportedly failed one day after deployment because the solar panels were wired to discharge instead of charge. Skipper was to have tested ballistic missile defense technologies in an aerobraking orbit, but remains instead in its original 800 km circular track. Table of Recent Launches ------------------------ Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Feb 1 0115 Palapa C-1 Atlas IIAS Canaveral LC36B Comsat 06A Feb 5 0719 N-STAR b Ariane 44P Kourou ELA2 Comsat 07A Feb 14 1901 Intelsat 708 Chang Zheng 3B Xichang Comsat FTO Feb 17 2043 NEAR Delta 7925-8 Canaveral LC17B Space probe 08A Feb 19 0058 Gonets-D1 ) 09A? Gonets-D1 ) 09B? Gonets-D1 ) Tsiklon-3 Plesetsk LC32 Comsats 09C? Kosmos-2328) 09D? Kosmos-2329) 09E? Kosmos-2330) 09F? Feb 19 0832 Raduga Proton-K/DM2 Baykonur LC81 Comsat 10A Feb 21 1234 Soyuz TM-23 Soyuz-U2 Baykonur LC1 Spaceship 11A Feb 22 2018 Columbia Shuttle Kennedy LC39B Spaceship 12A Feb 24 1124 Polar Delta Vandenberg SLC2W Science 13A Feb 26 0130 TSS-1 OV-102,LEO Science 12B Mar 9 0133 REX-II Pegasus XL L1011/Vandenberg Technol. 14A Mar 14 0711 Intelsat 707 Ariane 44LP Kourou ELA2 Comsat 15A Mar 14 1740 Kosmos-2331 Soyuz-U Plesetsk LC43/4 Recon 16A Mar 21 0453 IRS-P3 PSLV Sriharikota Rem.sensing 17A Mar 22 0813 Atlantis Shuttle Kennedy LC39B Spaceship 18A Mar 28 0021 GPS Delta 7925 Canaveral LC17A Navigation 19A Payloads no longer in orbit -------------------------- Feb 22 Progress M-30 Deorbited over Pacific Feb 29 Soyuz TM-22 Landed in Kazakstan Mar 9 Columbia Landed at KSC Mar 12 FSW-1 capsule Reentered over Atlantic Mar 19 TSS-1 Reentered over Middle East Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 2 STS-78 Jun 27 OV-103 Discovery Palmdale OMDP OV-104 Atlantis LEO STS-76 OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 3 STS-77 May 16 ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/RSRM-54/ VAB Bay 1 STS-77 ML2/RSRM-46/ET-77/OV-104 LC39B STS-76 ML3/ .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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/QEDT/jcm/space/jsr/jsr.html | | ftp://sao-ftp.harvard.edu/pub/jcm/space/news/news.* | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'