Jonathan's Space Report No. 122 1992 Jul 13 I'll be in the real Cambridge for the next few weeks; normal service will resume in early August. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Shuttle Mission STS-50 ------------------------ Orbiter OV-102 Columbia landed on Runway 33 at Kennedy Space Center at 1142:25 UTC Jul 9 (main gear touchdown) after a one day delay due to bad weather at Edwards. Mission duration was 13 days 19 h 30 m 4 sec, the longest Shuttle flight yet. Columbia now has 2132 flight hours in 12 missions, more than any of the other orbiters. The mission beat Gemini 7's duration by 55 minutes, making it the longest US spaceflight with the exception of the three Skylab missions, although it is still very short by Salyut/Mir standards. Bonnie Dunbar now has 761 h 15 min in 3 flights, more than any US astronaut except Brandenstein, Young, and the Skylab astronauts. Erratum: The Shuttle record was broken at 1312 UTC Jul 6 not 1349 UTC as I mysteriously reported last week. Some day I'll learn to do arithmetic right :-) After nearly 10 years, the concept of a reusable Spacelab is taking on more substance. Spacelab Long Module unit 1, the pressurized lab used for the USML-1 flight, has now made 4 flights in space. Unit 2, which will be used for the SL-J flight later this year, has made only 2 flights. Spacelab unpressurized pallets have been used on 8 flights, but I have been unable so far to trace their re-use history (Any help gratefully appreciated). Giotto ------ The European Space Agency probe Giotto encountered comet P/Grigg-Skjellerup on 1992 Jul 10 at 1530 UTC. Its trajectory was expected to pass 200 km from the nucleus. Giotto flew past P/Halley in 1986; during that encounter its camera was destroyed, but its particles and fields experiments are still working. Mir --- Progress M-13 docked with the front port of Mir at 1655 UTC on Jul 4. An initial attempt on Jul 2 was a failure. It will remain docked to Mir for only a few weeks; on Jul 26 the Soyuz TM-15 will be launched with a replacement crew and will use the docking port now occupied by the Progress. Launches -------- General Dynamics' Atlas II Centaur flight AC-103 was launched on Jul 2 around 2200 UTC from Launch Complex 36A at Cape Canaveral. It carried the 6th DSCS III communications satellite together with an IABS apogee stage; the DSCS III is built by GE Astro Space, and owned by the Defense Communications Agency. DSCS stands for Defense Satellite Communications System. Rockwell Navstar GPS satellite 26 was launched at 0920 UTC on Jul 7 by Delta 211 ( a 7925 model) from Launch Complex 17B at Cape Canaveral. I don't know the serial number of the GPS that was axed by the anti-nuclear activists, does anyone? Kosmos-2195 was launched on Jul 1 around 2010 UTC. It is a naval navigation satellite built by NPO Prikladnoi Mekhaniki of Krasnoyarsk, Russia and launched by a Kosmos R-14 booster built by NPO Yuzhnoye of Ukraine. Launch site was Plesetsk, Russia. Kosmos-2195 entered the same plane as Kosmos-2135, launched in Feb 1991. There are 6 orbital planes in the SNG navy navsat system, and another 4 in the parallel civilian Tsikada system. Most recent launches to each plane are as follows: PLANE Sat Launch Date Orbit System (km x km x deg) 0 Kosmos-2195 1992 Jul 1 958x1010x83 D76/ Navy 30 Kosmos-2184 1992 Apr 15 965x1016x83 D75/ Navy 60 Kosmos-2154 1991 Aug 22 970x1009x83 D72/ Navy 90 Kosmos-2172 1991 Nov 27 946x1019x83 D73/ Navy 120 Kosmos-2142 1991 Apr 16 961x1020x83 D71/ Navy 150 Kosmos-2180 1992 Feb 17 961x1015x83 D74/ Navy 195 Kosmos-2181 1992 Mar 9 971x1014x83 E23/ Tsikada 240 Nadezhda (3) 1991 Mar 12 955x1019x83 E22/ Tsikada-KOSPAS 285 Kosmos-2123 1991 Feb 5 964x1006x83 E21/ Tsikada-RS12,RS13 330 Nadezhda (2) 1990 Feb 27 953x1021x83 E20/ Tsikada-KOSPAS A satellite launched at 1000 UTC on Jul 8 from Plesetsk by a Molniya launch vehicle is probably an early warning satellite to be called Kosmos-2196. Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 1 STS-52 OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 OMDP OV-104 Atlantis LC39B STS-46 OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 3 STS-47 ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/STS-46/ET/OV-104 LC39B ML2/STS-47 VAB Bay 3 ML3/ VAB Thanks to McDonnell Douglas/Huntsville, General Dynamics/San Diego, the USNO GPS info service and Ruediger Jehn/ESOC for help in preparing this issue. .-----------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS4 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : mcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | USA | | '-----------------------------------------------------------------------------'