Jonathan's Space Report No. 126 1992 Aug 24 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mir ---- The Soyuz TM-15 crew, Anatoli Solov'yov and Sergey Avdeev, continue in orbit aboard the Mir complex. They are due to remain aboard the station until January 1993. The Progress M-14 supply craft was launched to the station on Aug 15 and was due to dock on Aug 17. Shuttle ------- The STS-47/Spacelab-J mission is due for launch on Sep 11. Endeavour has been mated to the STS-47 stack and will be rolled out to the pad tomorrow. Launches --------- Atlas Centaur AC-71, launched at 2340 UTC (? time unconfirmed) on Aug 22 from complex 36B at Cape Canaveral, was destroyed when the Centaur second stage failed to ignite. This is the second Centaur I failure in 3 flights (although 4 Centaur II's have succesfully flown since the last failure). The payload, Galaxy IR, a Hughes HS376 communications satellite, was to have supplemented the Hughes Galaxy network. Recent Atlas Centaur Launches: Launch UTC Type Payload 496 1990 Jul 25 1921 Atlas I AC-69 CRRES 498 1991 Apr 18 2330 Atlas I AC-70 BS-3H [Centaur failure] 501 1991 Dec 7 2247 Atlas II AC-102 Eutelsat II F-3 502 1992 Feb 11 0041 Atlas II AC-101 DSCS III F-5/IABS 503 1992 Mar 14 0000 Atlas I AC-72 Galaxy V 504 1992 Jun 10 0000 Atlas IIA AC-105 Intelsat K 505 1992 Jul 2 2154 Atlas II AC-103 DSCS III F-6/IABS 506 1992 Aug 22 2340 Atlas I AC-71 Galaxy IR [Centaur failure] A Resurs-F remote sensing satellite was launched by Soyuz from Plesetsk in Russia on Aug 19. The Optus B1 satellite has made the first burn of its liquid apogee engine on its way to geostationary orbit, following successful launch and burn of the Star 63F perigee kick motor. The Chinese recoverable satellite launched on Aug 9 was the first of the new FSW-2 series, and used a new variant of the Chang Zheng 2 launch vehicle, the CZ-2D. The FSW-1 series uses the CZ-2C, and the Optus launch used the CZ-2E. Reentries --------- The Kosmos-2207 spy satellite reentered on Aug 13 after 14 days in space. Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 1 STS-52 OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 3 STS-53 OV-104 Atlantis OPF Bay 2 OMDP OV-105 Endeavour VAB Bay 3 STS-47 ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/ ML2/STS-47/ET/OV-105 VAB Bay 3 ML3/STS-52 VAB Bay 1 .-----------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS4 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : mcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | USA | | '-----------------------------------------------------------------------------'