Jonathan's Space Report No. 513 2003 Nov 3, Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Station -------------------- Soyuz TMA-2 undocked from the Zarya module at 2317 UTC on Oct 27 with Yuriy Malenchenko, Ed Lu and Pedro Duque aboard. It fired its deorbit engines at 0147 UTC on Oct 28 and landed near Arkalyk in Kazakhstan at about 0241 UTC. Happily, there was no repetition of the reentry anomaly which caused Soyuz TMA-1 to land off course. Aboard the Station, the Expedition 8 crew of Mike Foale and Aleksandr Kaleri are settling in to their vigil on orbit. Soyuz TMA-3 is docked to the Pirs module and Progress M-48 is docked to Zvezda. Recent Launches --------------- Eurockot/Krunichev has launched a UR-100N Rokot two-stage refurbished missile with a Briz-KM upper stage and the SERVIS-1 satellite. SERVIS-1 (Space Environment Reliability Verification of Integrated System) is owned by the Japanese USEF organization and (possibly) the Japanese Ministry of Trade and Industry; the satellite is to flight-qualify a variety of spacecraft components including navigation, computer, star tracker, battery and laser gyro. It was built by Mitsubishi. The purpose of SERVIS is to increase the reliability of Japanese satellites; meanwhile, JAXA lost contact with the Midori-2 earth observing satellite last week and its mission is presumed lost. China has launched a recoverable satellite with a Chang Zheng 2D rocket from Jiuquan. The satellite is a modified version of the FSW-2 recoverable satellite and includes a camera payload which will probably be used for both military reconnaissance and earth resources studies. Some Western analysts expected that the new FSW would be the previously promised `seeds' mission with a study of 1000 species of seeds in space, but the Xinhua news agency release does not mention this and emphasizes only 'land surveying, mapping and other scientific experiments'. No US orbital elements have been released so far. Thanks to work by independent analysts and info from some of the satellite operators, I can now report the identities of the 2003-42 launch objects: 27939 2003-42A Mozhaets 4 27940 2003-42B S3M rocket/Rubin-4-DSI 27941 2003-42C NigeriaSat-1 27942 2003-42D UK-DMC 27943 2003-42E BILSAT-1 27944 2003-42F Larets 27945 2003-42G STSat-1 27947 2003-42J cataloging error - not a real object BILSAT-1 has begun testing its cold-gas propulsion system; the Surrey-built satellites comprising the Disaster Monitoring Constellation (Alsat, UK-DMC, NigeriaSat and BILSAT) have a limited maneuvering capability. It has been confirmed that Larets is a small 0.2m sphere covered with laser retroreflectors for calibration and geodesy, although it still isn't clear which Russian organizations built, own and operate it. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Sep 9 0429 USA 171 Titan 4B/Centaur Canaveral SLC40 Sigint 41A Sep 16 PS2 KT-1 Taiyuan Test F01 Sep 27 0612 UK-DMC ) Imaging 42D NigeriaSat-1 ) Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC132 Imaging 42C BILSAT-1 ) Imaging 42E STSat-1 ) Astronomy 42G Mozhaets-4 ) Comms? 42A Larets ) Calib 42F Rubin-4-DSI ) Test 42B Sep 27 2314 Insat 3E ) Ariane 5G Kourou ELA3 Comms 43E e-Bird ) Comms 43B SMART-1 ) Lunar 43C Oct 1 0403 Galaxy 13 Zenit-3SL SL Odyssey Comms 44B Oct 15 0100 Shenzhou 5 ) CZ-2F Jiuquan Spaceship 45A SZ-5 OM ) Imaging 45G Oct 17 0452 IRS-P6 PSLV Sriharikota Imaging 46A Oct 18 0538 Soyuz TMA-3 Soyuz-FG Baykonur Spaceship 47A Oct 18 1617 DMSP F16 Titan 23G Vandenberg Weather 48A Oct 21 0316 ZY-1 No. 2 ) CZ-4B Taiyuan Imaging 49A CX-1 ) Comms 49B Oct 30 1343 SERVIS-1 Rokot Plesetsk Tech 50A Nov 3 0720 FSW CZ-2D Jiuquan Imaging 51A .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Somerville MA 02143 | | | c/o | | | Center for Astrophysics, | | | 60 Garden St, MS6 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@host.planet4589.org | | USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://www.planet4589.org/jsr.html | | Back issues: http://www.planet4589.org/space/jsr/back | | Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@host.planet4589.org, (un)subscribe jsr | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'