Jonathan's Space Report No. 529 2004 Jun 28, Somerville, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The first piloted spaceflight by private company Scaled Composites was accomplished on Jun 21, with Spaceship One flight 60L/15P. The White Knight carrier aircraft, piloted by Brian Binnie, took off from Mojave Airport (Runway 30/12) at 1347 UTC. The Spaceship One, piloted by Mike Melvill, was dropped from White Knight at 1450 UTC at an altitude of 14.3 km and the Spaceship One's hybrid rocket fired for around 76 seconds, letting Melvill's craft soar to an apogee of 100.124 km. The vehicle landed back at Mojave on RW30 at 1514 UTC. There are reports that a trim control device failed during the ascent, causing an unwanted roll and reducing performance, but details are sketchy so far. Nevertheless this is a historic moment, marking the real dawn of commercial human spaceflight. The trajectory was highly suborbital, with a perigee close to the center of the Earth - inertial orbit parameters at apogee were about -6374 x 100 km x 35.0 deg. The inertial velocity at apogee was probably at most 0.3 km/s; if they had launched east instead of west they would have reached 0.5 km/s. The velocity needed for orbit at 100 km is 7.8 km/s, a big difference. A spacewalk by astronauts Gennadiy Padalka and Mike Fincke was cut short on Jun 24 when the oxygen supply on Fincke's suit, Orlan M-26, malfunctioned. Fincke was called back into the airlock just after exiting it, when the pressure in an oxygen bottle started to decrease; apparently a faulty switch was to blame and the problem can be worked around for another try next week. The Pirs airlock was depressurized by 2156 UTC with the hatch opened at that time; Fincke exited at about 2200 and came back in at 2208. Padalka apparently stayed inside Pirs. The hatch was closed at 2210 after 14 min 22s and the airlock was repressurized at 2213 UTC. Global Positioning System satellite GPS SVN 60 was launched on Jun 23 as flight GPS IIR-12. The Boeing Delta 7925 rocket's second stage entered a 175 x 392 km x 36.9 deg parking orbit followed by a 191 x 1270 km x 37.2 deg intermediate orbit; the spinning solid third stage then fired to put GPS SVN 60 in transfer orbit. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. May 4 1242 DirecTV-7S Zenit-3SL Odyssey, Pacific Comms 16A May 19 2222 AMC-11 Atlas IIAS Canaveral SLC36B Comms 17A May 20 1747 ROCSAT-2 Taurus Vandenberg 576-E Imaging 18A May 25 1234 Progress M-49 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 19A May 28 0600 Kosmos-2405 Tsiklon-2 Baykonur LC90/20 Sigint 20A Jun 10 0128 Kosmos-2406 Zenit-2 Baykonur LC45 Sigint 21A Jun 16 2227 Intelsat 10-02 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC200/39 Comms 22A Jun 23 2254 GPS SVN 60 Delta 7925 Canaveral SLC17B Navigation 23A .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Somerville MA 02143 | inter : jcm@host.planet4589.org | | USA | jcm@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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'