Jonathan's Space Report No. 414 1999 Dec 12 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The European Space Agency's XMM satellite is in orbit. The fourth Ariane 5 launch (and the first commercial flight) took off on schedule from Kourou on Dec 10 at 1432 UTC. The initial version of the Ariane 5 EPS upper stage can only make a single burn, so mission 504 flew an unusual direct ascent trajectory to its highly elliptical orbit. The EPC main stage separated at 1442 UTC in a high energy suborbital trajectory with a velocity of around 7.8 km/s, and impact near the Galapagos Islands (I don't know what the apogee was). The EPS upper stage ignited and made a long 16 minute burn to accelerate the vehicle to over 9 km/s and 1880 km altitude. XMM separated from the EPS upper stage at 1501 UTC, and is in an 838 x 112473 km x 40.0 deg transfer orbit, very close to the planned one. The first apogee burn will be on Dec 11. Space Command have cataloged the spacecraft as 1999-66A (although the listing calls it MMX!) This mission, Ariane 504 or flight V119, was the second fully successful flight for Ariane 5, which is a completely new launch vehicle (Ariane 4 is basically an upgraded version of Ariane 1, 2 and 3). The first Ariane 5 flight ended in disaster, with the Cluster science payload ending up in the mangrove swamp next to the launch pad. The second flight had a relatively minor roll problem which left the experimental payload in an orbit which was thousands of kilometers lower than planned. The third flight placed the ARD capsule on its planned suborbital trajectory and put a dummy satellite in geostationary transfer orbit. The first two test missions were carried out under the auspices of the European Space Agency (ESA); Ariane 503 was owned and launched by the commercial Arianespace launch provider, but counted as a test mission, while XMM is Arianespace's first commercial contract to fly on Ariane 5, albeit with ESA as the customer. The success of flight V119 will bolster confidence that the early problems with the vehicle are behind it, and 2000 should see a ramp up of commercial geostationary comsat launches on Ariane 5. The Ariane 5 vehicle consists of two EAP (Etage d'Acceleration a Poudre) solid boosters, the EPC (Etage Principal Cryogenique) main stage which features the LH2/LOX high energy 1145 kN Snecma Vulcain engine, and the EPS (Etage a Propergols Stockables) upper stage with the 29 kN Aestus engine burning hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide. The large nose fairing covers EPS and the payload. The only other launch vehicles with a liquid hydrogen first stage are the Shuttle and Japan's H-2. XMM (X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission), built by DaimlerChrysler Dornier Satellitensystem, is a large X-ray observatory which will complement NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. XMM has larger collecting area but poorer spatial resolution, so it will be better at getting detailed spectra of bright and moderately faint X-ray sources, while Chandra will be better at detecting the very faintest X-ray sources and at distinguishing spectral details in different parts of a source (for instance, separating a pulsar from a supernova remnant or a quasar from a cluster of galaxies). The claim on the ESA web site that XMM "will see infinitely more than any previous X-ray satellite" (http://www.estec.esa.nl/spdwww/xmm/factsheet.html) is an embarrassingly ridiculous misstatement, but I certainly expect XMM to make many important discoveries and be one of the most important space science missions of the coming decade. XMM has three similar X-ray telescopes. One of the telescopes images directly onto the EPIC-pn CCD camera; the other two have Reflection Grating Spectrometers (RGS) which split the light, sending images to the EPIC-MOS cameras and dispersed spectra to the RFC-MOS cameras. XMM also carries an 0.30-meter aperture optical/ultraviolet telescope, the Optical Monitor, which will allow simultaneous measurements of the optical and ultraviolet light from the source being studied with the X-ray telescopes. XMM's hydrazine propulsion system has eight 22N thrusters which will be used to raise the perigee to around 7000 km. Dry mass of XMM is 3234 kg, and it carries 530 kg of hydrazine fuel at launch. Control of the XMM spacecraft will be from ESOC/Darmstadt, while the instruments will be controlled from the VILSPA/Madrid station. The instruments will not be fully activated until early next year, when XMM is in its final orbit and VILSPA is ready for operation, so it will be a while before we know whether the telescope is working correctly. The Leicester University X-ray group will support the scientific analysis of data from XMM. There's a strong heritage of world-class X-ray astronomy in Europe, with the British groups at Leicester and Mullard Space Science Lab flying early sounding rockets and the Ariel 5 satellite in the 1970s and the Birmingham group (TTM/Kvant), the Utrecht group and the ESA team at ESTEC in Holland, the German groups at MPE/Garching (ROSAT) and now AIP/Potsdam, and a number of institutes (Milano, Bologna, Palermo, Roma) in Italy (BeppoSAX), as well as a bunch of places that don't do hardware but are very strong in data analysis and theory, like Andy Fabian's team in Cambridge. Oh, and let's not forget the Danes and Toulouse and Southampton and ... I'm sure whoever else I left out will remind me in no uncertain terms. The point is that while in many fields of space exploration Europe plays second rank to the US, in X-ray astronomy it's - in my opinion - an equal partner. Brazil ran into more bad luck on Dec 11 when the second launch of its VLS-1 rocket met a similar fate to the first one. Three minutes after launch the second stage failed to ignite and the vehicle went off course. It was destroyed by range safety command. On the previous mission, the strapons on the first stage failed, so at least on this flight the Brazilian team were able to test the first stage successfully. VLS-1 mission V02 carried a research satellite, SACI-2. A USAF weather satellite in the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) was launched from Vandenberg on Dec 12. The first Block 5D-3 model, satellite F-15 was placed in a suborbital trajectory by a two-stage Titan 23G, a refurbished Titan II ICBM. The Star 37S kick motor on the satellite fired 13 min after launch for orbit insertion. DMSP 5D F-15 is now in an 837 x 851 km x 98.9 deg orbit. The spacecraft, built by Lockheed Martin/Valley Forge, is similar in design to the civilian NOAA weather satellites. The Orbcomm Pegasus launch took off from Runway 22 at Wallops at 1756 UTC on Dec 3, and drop was at 1853 UTC. Thanks to Justin Ray of www.spaceflightnow.com (an excellent site) for the info; apparently the new Orbcomm satellites are slightly more massive that the earlier ones - probably around 45 kg. The Oldest Spacecraft - Errata ------------------------------- Pioneer 11 shouldn't have been in the list, it's been silent since 1995, and I omitted Nozomi which should have been there. I am informed TVSAT 2 was switched off on 1999 Oct 5, and that NOAA 10 (and possibly NOAA 9) is still alive. Thanks to all those who caught the errors. The surviving Marisat is actually Marisat 102, launched Oct 1976, and is qowned by Comsat General Corp, not INMARSAT (at one time INMARSAT used to lease the C and L band capacity). It is the oldest commercial satellite still in operation, and is a Hughes HS-356 (basically the same design as the HS-333 used for Anik A and Westar). The IMP 8 and LES-9 satellites are confirmed to be still working, and there is a report that Navy Navigation Satellite O-2 (sometimes incorrectly referred to as Transit 5B-5), which was launched in 1964, may still be transmitting. A number of spacecraft, like Giotto, are believed to be still workable but are currently dormant. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Nov 13 2255 GE 4 Ariane 44LP Kourou ELA2 Comsat 60A Nov 15 0729 MTSAT H-2 Tanegashima Comsat F04 Nov 19 2230 Shenzhou Chang Zheng 2F Jiuquan Spaceship 61A Nov 22 1620 Globalstar 29 ) Soyuz-Ikar Baykonur LC1 Comsat 62A Globalstar 34 ) Comsat 62B Globalstar 39 ) Comsat 62C Globalstar 61 ) Comsat 62D Nov 23 0406 UHF F/O F10 Atlas 2A Canaveral SLC36B Comsat 63A Dec 3 1622 Helios 1B ) Ariane 40 Kourou ELA2 Imaging 64A Clementine ) Sigint 64B Dec 3 1951 Mars Polar Lander MPL Cruise Stage Lander 01D? Dec 3 1951 Scott Probe ) MPL Cruise Stage Lander 01E? Amundsen Probe) Lander 01F? Dec 4 1853 Orbcomm FM30 ) Pegasus XL/HAPS Wallops Comsat 65A Orbcomm FM31 ) Comsat 65B Orbcomm FM32 ) Comsat 65C Orbcomm FM33 ) Comsat 65D Orbcomm FM34 ) Comsat 65E Orbcomm FM35 ) Comsat 65F Orbcomm FM36 ) Comsat 65G Dec 10 1432 XMM Ariane 5 Kourou ELA3 Astronomy 66A Dec 11 1830 SACI-2 VLS Alcantara Research F05 Dec 12 1738 DMSP 5D-3 F-15 Titan 23G Vandenberg SLC4W Weather 67A Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia Palmdale OMDP OV-103 Discovery LC39B STS-103 1999 Dec 11 HST SM-3A OV-104 Atlantis OPF Bay 3 STS-101 2000 Mar 16 ISS OV-105 Endeavour VAB Bay 1 STS-99 2000 Jan 13 SRTM MLP1/ MLP2/RSRM-73/ET-101/OV-103 LC39B MLP3/RSRM-71?/ET?/OV-105 VAB Bay 1 .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'