Jonathan's Space Report No. 408 1999 Sep 26 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Shuttle schedule's still on hold pending repairs to the Orbiters. Columbia was flown to Palmdale, California for refurbishment on Sep 24-25. It will remain there until mid-2000. The next mission will probably be STS-103/Discovery, the HST servicing mission, currently expected in late November. Recent Launches --------------- Mars Climate Orbiter began its Mars Orbit Insertion burn on Sep 23 at 0850UTC, but a navigation error meant that the closest approach to the surface of Mars was only 57 km, half the intended height. No signal was received after MCO went behind the planet, and it is feared that the spacecraft burnt up during the unintentional aerocapture maneuver. Closest approach to the planet was probably around 0900 UTC. I don't know the latitude and longitude of closest approach, or the likely impact site - if anyone has calculated these please pass the info on to me. It's possible that MCO survived the aeropass and is in orbit around Mars but defunct, with its antenna broken off; or that the friction took so much energy from MCO that its debris impacted on Mars some way down track from the entry point. Questions for the class: do we know the current state of the Martian atmosphere at the entry point well enough to model what happened to MCO? My immediate prejudice based on behaviour of elliptical orbit low perigee Earth satellites is that the main part of the MCO bus, even if damaged, should have survived the first pass and remained in orbit, but probably in an orbit that would impact on the next rev: about 50 km perigee, unknown apogee, and 90 degrees inclination. The location of the succeeding impact point depends critically on that unknown apogee, which determines the orbital period and therefore how much Mars rotated before the impact. I'm not competent to do the relevant calculations, so we'll have to wait for more definitive statements from JPL. Foton 12 (spacecraft 34KS No. 12) was launched on Sep 9. The Foton satellites, built by TsSKB Progress of Samara, Russia, are based on the Zenit spy satellite bus, related to the old Vostok spaceship. The spacecraft consists of a spherical descent module, a service module with solid-propellant deorbit motor, and a separable battery pack. Foton missions carry materials processing experiments and life sciences experiments. This flight carried a number of European experiments. The 11A511U (Soyuz-U) launch vehicle took off from Plesetsk at 1800 UTC on Sep 9 and entered a 216 x 379 km x 62.8 deg orbit 9 minutes later. After two weeks of microgravity, the battery pack and a small adapter separated, with two retrorocket covers also being ejected into a higher 323 x 492 km orbit. The retrorocket fired and separated, with the spacecraft's descent module landing in Russia at 52 28N 53 50E at between 0918 UTC and 0929 UTC (reports differ) on Sep 24. Four more Globalstar satellites were launched on Sep 22. A Starsem Soyuz/Ikar rocket placed the four satellites in orbit. The 11A511U Soyuz-U took off from area 1 at 5 GIK (Baykonur). The four strapons separated 2 min after launch, and at 4 min after launch the Blok-A central core (nominally stage 2) separated. The Blok I third stage fired until 9 min after launch, entering a 235 x 906 km x 51.9 deg transfer orbit and separating from the Ikar upper stage and dispenser. At apogee Ikar burned to deploy the four satellites (M033, M050, M055, M058) in a 900 x 960 km x 51.9 deg parking orbit. Ikar later made a deorbit burn and reentered on Sep 24. Globalstar satellite numbers which have not yet been launched are M029, M031, M034, M039, M056, and M057. The Globalstar satellites use the Space Systems/Loral LS-400 bus, built by SS-L/Palo Alto and Alenia/Roma. Globalstar will provide handheld telephone service starting in the next few months. Lockheed Martin launched an Atlas 2AS vehicle on Sep 23 carrying the Echostar 5 satellite. The Centaur second stage delivered Echostar 5 to a supersynchronous transfer orbit of 131 x 45526 km x 26.6 deg. This was the first flight to use RL-10 engines since the Delta 3 failure in May. Echostar 5 is a Ku-band satellite supplementing the Dish Network, built by Space Systems/Loral using the FS-1300 bus. The Lockheed Martin Athena has also returned to flight. Athena-2 flight LM-007 took off from Space Launch Complex 6 at Vandenberg AFB on Sep 24 with Space Imaging Inc's Ikonos commercial imaging satellite. Ikonos flight satellite number 2 has apparently been named simply 'Ikonos' on orbit (satellite number 1 fell in the Pacific in a launch failure). If the launch profile was similar to that planned for the first Ikonos launch, the Orbus 21 third stage placed Ikonos and the OAM fourth stage on a suborbital trajectory. The first OAM burn would then place the stack in a 220 x 689 km x 98.2 deg transfer orbit 10 min after launch. 51 min after launch, the OAM fired again at apogee for 6 minutes, placing Ikonos in a 678 x 682 km x 98.1 deg sun-synchronous orbit with a 10:30am descending node. It then separated from Ikonos and fired again to lower its orbit for disposal. Space Command is tracking it in a 207 x 431 km x 98.2 deg orbit, but also cataloged a third object in a 137 x 630 km x 97.7 deg orbit. The orbit of this third object is very close to the quoted post-disposal orbit for the OAM intended for the Ikonos 1 launch, so I'm wondering if this might actually be the OAM. The lower inclination is odd if it's a piece that came off during the transfer orbit, although I suppose it might be the Orbus 21 stage if that overperformed and just reached orbit. Ikonos spacecraft 2 carries a 1-meter resolution black-and-white camera and a 4-meter resolution color camera, with a 13 km swath width. The spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin/Sunnyvale using the LM900 bus and carries 6 MR-103G 0.1N thrusters for attitude control. Mass is 726 kg. Arianespace launched an Ariane 44LP with the Telstar 7 satellite into supersynchronous transfer orbit of 129 x 59944 km x 7.0 deg on Sep 25 (this orbit is from the Space Command data and the perigee seems a bit low; the third stage is tracked in a 175 x 64273 km orbit). It's unusual for an Ariane launch to use the high-apogee transfer orbit technique. Telstar 7 is a Space Systems/Loral FS-1300 satellite owned by Loral Skynet. It has 24 C-band and 24 Ku-band transponders and has a dry mass of 1537 kg (3790 kg fuelled). Telstar 7 will provide communications for North America from 129 deg E. This was a busy week for Space Systems/Loral, with 4 Globalstar and two FS-1300 satellites orbited. The Yamal 101 satellite was in a 1442.06 35504 x 36302 km x 0.0 deg geosynchronous drift orbit ayt 63.1E drifting 1.5 deg W per day on Sep 24. The Yamal 102 satellite was in a 1438.99 min, 35581 x 36104 km x 0.0 deg orbit over 70E drifting 0.7 deg W per day on Sep 22. The early orbital data showing the Yamals in transfer orbit was erroneous; Space Command is not yet tracking the SOZ ullage motors. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Aug 12 2252 Telkom 1 Ariane 42P Kourou ELA2 Comsat 42A Aug 17 0437 Globalstar 24) Delta 7420 Canaveral SLC17B Comsat 43A Globalstar 27) Globalstar 53) Globalstar 54) Aug 18 1800 Kosmos-2365 Soyuz-U Plesetsk LC43/3 Recon 44A Aug 26 1203 Kosmos-2366 Kosmos-3M Plesetsk Navsat 45A Sep 4 2234 Koreasat 3 Ariane 42P Kourou ELA2 Comsat 46A Sep 6 1636 Yamal 101 ) Proton-K/DM Baykonur Comsat 47A Yamal 102 ) Comsat 47B Sep 9 1800 Foton 12 Soyuz-U Plesetsk Micrograv 48A Sep 22 1433 Globalstar 33) Soyuz-U/Ikar Baykonur LC1? Comsat 49A Globalstar 50) Comsat 49B Globalstar 55) Comsat 49C Globalstar 58) Comsat 49D Sep 23 0602 Echostar 5 Atlas 2AS Canaveral SLC36A Comsat 50A Sep 24 1821 Ikonos Athena-2 Vandenberg SLC6 Imaging 51A Sep 25 0629 Telstar 7 Ariane 44LP Kourou ELA2 Comsat 52A Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia Palmdale OMDP OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 1 STS-103 1999 Nov OV-104 Atlantis OPF Bay 3 STS-101 2000 OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 2 STS-99 1999 Dec MLP1/ MLP2/ MLP3/RSRM-71?/ET? VAB Bay 3 STS-99? .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS6 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@cfa.harvard.edu | | USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/jsr.html | | Back issues: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/back | | Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@head-cfa.harvard.edu, (un)subscribe jsr | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'