Jonathan's Space Report No. 441 2000 Dec 19, Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Stations -------------------- The STS-97 mission has been completed successfully, and Station Alpha has a new set of solar panels. The Station was observed by several dozen of us from the roof of the Harvard Observatory as it passed over at 0006 UTC on Dec 16, an impressive sight at about mag -1. Astronauts Noriega and Tanner on Dec 7 performed EVA-3 to fix the tension in the SAW-2B solar array on the Station. Airlock depress was at 1609 UTC, hatch open at 1610 UTC and battery power at 1613 UTC. The astronauts left the airlock a few minutes later, probably about 1620 UTC. After fixing the solar array they installed the FPPU device to measure plasma conditions near the top of P6 and performed a few other minor tasks. They returned to the airlock at around 2110 UTC, closing the hatch at 2119 and repressurizing at 2122 for a duration of 5:14 (depress), 5:09 (Hatch open/close) or 5:10 (NASA rule). The Endeavour crew then entered the station at 1436 UTC on Dec 8, delivering supplies to Alpha's Expedition One crew. Hatches were closed again at 1551 UTC Dec 9, and Endeavour undocked at 1913 UTC the same day. After one flyaround of the station, Endeavour fired its engines to depart the vicinity at 2017 UTC Dec 9. The deorbit burn was at 2158 UTC on Dec 11, changing the orbit from 351 x 365 km to 27 x 365 km, with landing at Runway 15 of Kennedy Space Center at 2303 UTC. The next Shuttle flight is STS-98. Orbiter 104 Atlantis will deliver the Destiny lab module to the Station. Atlantis has been mated to external tank ET-106 and solid boosters RSRM-77. The stack is on Mobile Launch Platform MLP-2 in high bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building. Rollout of STS-98 to the pad is being delayed because some wiring in the SRBs needs repair. During the STS-97 launch, the SRB separation system had problems when one explosive separation cartridge failed to fire; a backup system saved the mission. Current Launches ---------------- No new launches since Dec 6; an Ariane 5G is scheduled for Dec 20. (the "5G" designation is used for the generic Ariane 5 to distinguish it from the uprated versions which will be introduced soon). The UTC launch dates for EROS A1 and USA 155 are Dec 5 and Dec 6 respectively; sorry about the typo last issue. Object 26614, originally cataloged as 2000-72G from the Ariane-5 PAS-1R launch, has been recataloged as 1978-26HU; I assume 72G turned out to be spurious or unconfirmed. 72F, cataloged as "Ariane 5 deb (SYLDA)" is actually the conical ACU 1663SP adapter that separated PAS 1R from AMSAT's SBS adapter. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Nov 10 1714 GPS SVN 41 Delta 7925 Canaveral SLC17A Navsat 71A Nov 16 0107 PAS 1R ) Ariane 5G Kourou ELA3 Commsat 72A AMSAT-Oscar-40) Commsat 72B STRV-1c ) Tech 72C STRV-1d ) Tech 72D Nov 16 0132 Progress M1-4 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 73A Nov 20 2300 QuickBird 1 Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC132 Imaging 74A Nov 21 1824 EO-1 ) Delta 7320 Vandenberg SLC2W Imaging 75A SAC-C ) Imaging 75B Munin ) Science 75C Nov 21 2356 Anik F-1 Ariane 44L Kourou ELA2 Commsat 76A Nov 30 1959 Sirius 3 Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur LC81L Commsat 77A Dec 1 0306 Endeavour) Space Shuttle Kennedy LC39 Spaceship 78A ITS P6 ) Station seg. Dec 5 1232 EROS A1 Start-1 Svobodniy Imaging 79A Dec 6 0247 USA 155 Atlas 2AS Canaveral SLC36A Commsat? 80A Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia Palmdale OMDP OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 1 STS-102 2001 Mar 1 ISS 5A.1 OV-104 Atlantis VAB Bay 3 STS-98 2001 Jan 18 ISS 5A OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 2 STS-100 2001 Apr 19 ISS 6A .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'