Jonathan's Space Report No. 487 2002 Sep 10, Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Station -------------------- The Expedition 5 crew remain aboard the Station. The next mission to Station is the STS-112 flight in early October. Four more pieces of debris (27521-27524) have recently been cataloged in low orbit, associated with the station but 200 km below it. They are probably associated with the spacewalks in August and have already lost altitude due to friction with the atmosphere. The STS-112 mission will deliver the S1 (Starboard 1) truss to the Station, and attach it to the end of S0. S1 mostly consists of a thermal control system, with big ammonia cooling loops and three large radiator panels each 3.3m x 22.9m. The three panels are attached to a single base structure which can rotate relative to the truss to orient the radiators. On the other side of the truss is the CETA cart, which will be used to ferry equipment along the mobile transporter railway. S1 was built by Boeing/Huntingdon Beach and Boeing/Huntsville. CETA may also be built at Huntingdon Beach but I'm not sure. Jonathan's Cargo Bay Manifest estimate for STS-112: Mass/kg Bay 1-2 Orbiter Docking System 1800 2 EMU spacesuits? 240? Bay 3-13 S1 Integrated Truss Segment 12572 CETA Cart A 283 Sill RMS 410 --------------------------------------------------------------- Total 15305? Recent Launches --------------- Japan's H-2A rocket successfully launched the DRTS and USERS satellites at 0820 UTC on Sep 10. USERS is in a 440 x 455 km x 30.4 deg orbit. As of Sep 11, DRTS (renamed Kodama) was in a 7414 x 36013 km x 12.0 deg transfer orbit, presumably following a first apogee engine firing. A later engine firing failed. H-2A-F3 is the H-2A 2024 variant, with 2 large strapons and 2 small strapons, and a 4-meter fairing of the 4/4D-LC type. After launch from Tanegashima the first stage burned for 6 minutes and separated prior to the second stage first burn, which concluded at 0832 UTC in a 450 km circular orbit. The USERS satellite separated at 0833 UTC. USERS is the Unmanned Space Experiment Recovery System, developed and operated by the USEF consortium for the Ministry of Trade and Industry. It carries microgravity and technology experiments and consists of a service module (SEM), made by Mitsubishi, and a reentry vehicle (REV) and propulsion module (PM), made by Nissan. The PM/REV will separate from the SM after eight months in space. The PM fires to put the PM/REV in a -110 x 450 km orbit over the Indian Ocean; the PM will separate at 120 km altitude and be destroyed on reentry while the REV is recovered at 151E 22N in the Pacific near Japan's Ogasawara Islands. I don't have any details on the PM deorbit motor - please pass them on if you know anything (mass, size, thrust, burn time, manufacturer - probably Nissan). The SEM has a mass of 800 kg; the REV/PM has a total mass of 926 kg, but I don't know the separate masses of REV, PM and PM motor. At 0836 UTC the USERS payload attach adapter was jettisoned, and the two semi-cylindrical halves of the fairing below it were also separated, revealing the DRTS payload inside still attached to the second stage. The second stage reignited at 0846 UTC and burned for 2.5 minutes, entering geostationary transfer orbit. The DRTS satellite then separated. DRTS/Kodama is a Japanese analog to the TDRS satellites, and will be used for data relay and intersatellite communications. It is built by Mitsubishi for the Japanese NASDA space agency and has a mass of 1300 kg (dry), plus a further 1500 kg of propellant at launch for its propulsion system. The apogee engine is a 500N thruster and is a downrated version of the 1700N LAPS-derived engine used in the earlier COMETS satellite. The engine appears to have failed after a couple of burns. DRTS has a 3.6-meter Ka-band dish. India has launched a weather satellite, METSAT, in the first use of the PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) to a geostationary transfer trajectory. METSAT is about 1000 kg at launch; ISRO has not released any information on the size of the satellite. The launch was from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at the Sriharikota Range (SHAR). PSLV-C4 has an uprated fourth stage; the third stage was apparently suborbital with a Pacific Ocean impact, and the fourth stage reached GTO without a parking orbit (this is subject to confirmation, as ISRO's press info didn't include details of the trajectory). Apogee of the PS4 stage is 34500 km; the remaining distance to geostationary orbit was made up by METSAT's on-board fuel. Rumour has it that China carried out the first launch of the three-stage solid-fuelled KT-1 (Kaituozhe-1) rocket on Sep 15. KT-1 is apparently based on the DF-31 ballistic missile. The test launch carried a 50 kg satellite and was trying to reach a 300 km polar orbit, but apparently the launch was a failure. Since I haven't managed to confirm the rumour, I'm not including this launch in my launch list. An object has been detected in deep Earth orbit which is probably a recaptured Apollo Saturn IVB stage. It was captured from solar orbit near the L1 point in April 2002, flew 161000 km from the Moon around Jun 15, and is now in an orbit of about 288000 x 825100 km x 21.0 deg. Until its nature is confirmed, the object has been given the provisional designation J002E3. Webb Space Telescope -------------------- NASA has selected TRW to build the Next Generation Space Telescope, now renamed the James Webb Space Telescope. The announcement of this major contract, worth $824 million, had been expected for several months, with TRW and Lockheed Martin competing for the mission. Lockheed was prime for the Hubble Space Telescope, while TRW built Chandra. Earlier in the summer, NASA did select a team led by Arizona's George Rieke to built the observatory's main infrared camera. Scheduled launch of the 6-meter telescope has now slipped to 2010. The naming of the telescope after James Edwin Webb (1906-1992), a NASA manager who led the agency as its second Administrator from 1961 to 1968, has surprised many astronomers used to the tradition of naming such observatories after scientists, usually in consultation with the users of the satellite (e.g. the Einstein, Hubble, Chandra, and Compton satellites). This is the first spacecraft to honor a bureaucrat; Webb ran NASA during the preparation for the Apollo moon landings and the early years of the space science program, and although unknown to most astronomers (based on an unscientific poll of my colleagues) is remembered with respect by many spaceflight enthusiasts because of his association with Apollo. Previously, he was a congressional staffer, an executive at Sperry Gyroscope, the director of the Bureau of the Budget, an Undersecretary of State under Harry Truman, and then an oil company executive. According to space policy expert Dwayne Day, Webb did protect a broad-based NASA science program during a time when there was a lot of pressure, from President Kennedy on down, to put all of the money into Apollo and cancel everything else; I gather he is rumoured to be a hero of current NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe. It will be interesting to see if this naming starts a trend; an educational/outreach competition to name the SIRTF spacecraft was held recently, but no winner has been announced. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Aug 21 2205 Hot Bird 6 Atlas V 401 Canaveral SLC41 Comms 38A Aug 22 0515 Echostar VIII Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur LC81/23 Comms 39A Aug 28 2245 Atlantic Bird 1 ) Ariane 5G Kourou ELA3 Comms 40A MSG 1 ) Weather 40B Sep 6 0644 Intelsat 906 Ariane 44L Kourou ELA2 Comms 41A Sep 10 0820 Kodama) H2A 2024 Tanegashima Comms 42B USERS) Micrograv 42A Sep 12 1025 METSAT PSLV Sriharikota Weather 43A Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF STS-107 2003 Jan 16 Spacehab OV-103 Discovery VAB Maintenance OV-104 Atlantis LC39B STS-112 2002 Oct 2 ISS 9A OV-105 Endeavour OPF STS-113 2002 Nov ISS 11A .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'