Jonathan's Space Report No. 321 1997 May 12 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Mir --------------- The spacesuits used on the latest Mir spacewalk were, of course, the new Orlan-M variant and not the old Orlan-DMA. I got confused about the designations. The original Orlan suit was built for the lunar program. The long duration Orlan-D was the first to actually fly, on Salyut-6. Salyut-7 started off with Orlan-D suits, but in 1985 new Orlan-DM suits were delivered. Mir started off with the DM model, and the new DMA model arrived aboard Progress-37 or Progress-38 in 1988. Up to four suits have been in service on the station at any one time. Orlan-DMA No. 11 was used on a total of 14 spacewalks from 1988 to 1991. The Orlan-DMA suits are now being replaced by the Orlan-M. A first attempt at a chronology of Orlan suit use is at http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/misc/orlan Launch of STS-84 is scheduled for May 15. Atlantis carries the Orbiter Docking System and the Spacehab Double Module, and will dock with the Mir complex. Mike Foale will replace Jerry Linenger aboard the station. Recent Launches --------------- McDonnell Douglas launched a Delta 7920 rocket from Vandenberg on May 5, the first Delta launch since January's failure. It carried five satellites for Iridium LLC. The Delta successfully reached transfer orbit, and the second stage later reignited to circularize in a 625 x 643 km x 86.4 deg orbit from which it dispensed the five payloads. After the depletion burn, the Delta stage was in a 595 x 949 km x 86.7 deg orbit. The Motorola Iridium satellites mark the first use of the Lockheed Martin LM700 bus, and carry a communications payload built by Motorola's Satcom division in Chandler, Arizona. They will provide global personal telephone service. This first launch carried space vehicles 4 through 8 (presumably 1 to 3 were ground test vehicles). The satellites have a mass of about 700 kg. The satellites carry intersatellite crosslinks at Ka-band (23 GHz), L-band (1.6 GHz) links to and from the Iridium hand sets, and Ka-band links to the gateway ground stations which connect to the local public telephone networks. The master control facility is in the Virginia suburbs of Washington. A Chinese DFH-3 (Zhongxing 6?) communications satellite was launched on May 11 into a 207 x 35887 km x 28.46 deg transfer orbit by a Chang Zheng (Long March) 3A rocket. Table of Recent Launches ------------------------ Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Mar 1 0107 Intelsat 801 Ariane 44P Kourou ELA2 Comsat 09A Mar 4 0200 Zeya Start-1 Svobodniy LC5 Comsat 10A Mar 8 0601 Tempo 2 Atlas IIA Canaveral LC36A Comsat 11A Apr 4 1647 DMSP 5D-2 S-14 Titan 23G Vandenberg SLC4W Weather 12A Apr 4 1920 Columbia/STS-83) Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 13A MSL-1 Spacelab ) Apr 6 1604 Progress M-34 Soyuz-U Baykonur Cargo 14A Apr 9 0900? Kosmos-2340 Molniya-M Plesetsk EarlyWarn 15A Apr 16 2309 Thaicom 3 ) Ariane 44LP Kourou ELA2 Comsat 16A BSAT 1a ) 16B Apr 17 1303 Kosmos-2341 Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC132/1 Navsat 17A Apr 21 1159 Minisat-01 ) Pegasus XL L-1011, Gando Technology 18A Celestis ) Burial 18B Apr 25 0549 GOES 10 Atlas I Canaveral LC36B Weather 19A May 5 1455 Iridium SV004 ) Delta 7920 Vandenberg SLC2W Comsat 20E Iridium SV005 ) Comsat 20D Iridium SV006 ) Comsat 20C Iridium SV007 ) Comsat 20B Iridium SV008 ) Comsat 20A May 11 1617 DFH-3 CZ-3A Xichang Comsat 21A Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 1 STS-94 Jul 1 OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-85 Aug 7 OV-104 Atlantis LC39A STS-84 May 15 OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 3 STS-86 Sep 25 ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/RSRM-62 VAB Bay 1 STS-94 ML2/RSRM-60/ET-85/OV-104 LC39A STS-84 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 | | Back issues: ftp://sao-ftp.harvard.edu/pub/jcm/space/news/news.* | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'