Jonathan's Space Report No. 132 1992 Nov 2 **** This newsletter endorses Clinton-Gore '92 ***** Remember to vote ! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ STS-52 mission, continued ------------------------- On Oct 23 OV-102 Columbia was in a 301 x 303 km orbit inclined 28.5 deg. The Italian Lageos 2 satellite was deployed from Columbia on Oct 23 at 1357 UTC. The Italian Research Iterim Stage, on its first mission, carried out a sucessful burn at 1442 UTC and separated from Lageos 2 and its apogee stage, leaving them in a 297 x 5923 km x 41 deg orbit. The MAGE 1 apogee motor ignited around 1630 UTC to place the Lageos 2 satellite in a near-circular 5617 x 5950 km x 52.6 deg orbit. Meanwhile, OV-102 lowered its orbit to 285 x 293 km x 28.5 deg for operations with the USMP microgravity payload. On Oct 25 the RMS arm was used to unberth and reberth the CTA (Canadian Target Assembly) on three occasions, in a simulation of Space Station truss assembly. Similar tests were conducted on Oct 29 and Oct 30. On Oct 30 the orbit was lowered again to 206 x 214 km. On Oct 31 the CTA was unberthed by the arm at 0857 and deployed into orbit at 1006 while the Space Vision System was used to track it. Deorbit was at 1312 on Nov 1; Columbia touched down at 1405:53 UTC on Nov 1 on Runway 33 at the Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility. Mission duration of STS-52 was 9 days 20 hr 56 min 13 s. This was the 13th flight of Columbia which now has 2369 h 49 m of flight time, more than any other orbiter. Commander Jim Wetherbee, after two long duration flights, has more flight hours than all but two of the active pilot astronauts (Gibson and Richards). 1992 may or may not be the Year of the Woman in US politics, but it was a record year in spaceflight: 9 women flew (previous record was 6) and totalled almost 3 woman-months in orbit, which is nearly double the amount of flight time by women in any previous calendar year. If STS-53 flies to schedule in December, the two NASA astronauts with the most flight hours will be a woman and an African-American, illustrating that the diversification of the makeup of the astronaut corps has gone well beyond tokenism. Mir Space Station ------------------ The Progress M-14 cargo craft undocked and was deorbited on Oct 21. A new cargo craft, Progress M-15, was launched on Oct 27. Launches and Reentries ---------------------- Launches: Date Payload Rocket From Oct 22 1709 Columbia Shuttle Kennedy Space Center 70A Oct 23 1357 Lageos 2 IRIS OV-102 Columbia, LEO 70B Oct 27 1730? Progress M-15 Soyuz Baykonur 71A Oct 28 0015? Galaxy VII Ariane Kourou 72A Oct 29 1030? Kosmos-2218? Kosmos R-14 Plesetsk 73A Oct 31 1006 CTA - OV-102 Columbia, LEO 70C The Oct 29 launch is a navigation satellite, probably Kosmos-2218. Galaxy 7 (or 7H) is the first of Hughes' new generation C-band/Ku-band hybrid comsats; it is an HS-601 bus. The launch vehicle was an Ariane 42P with two solid strapons and the new H10 Plus upper stage. Launch of the USAF's MSTI satellite aboard Scout S210C was scrubbed last week and is now scheduled for Nov 4. According to NASA-GSFC, the Russian radar remote sensing satellite Almaz was deorbited on Oct 17 from a 300 km high orbit after 1.5 years in orbit. The Almaz lasted a shorter time than its prototype, Kosmos-1870, and one of its SAR radars failed at the beginning of the year. Its successor is not scheduled to be launched until 1995. The Foton spacecraft launched on Oct 8 landed on Oct 24 in Kazakhstan. 16-day missions are now standard for this type of spacecraft. The Molniya satellite launched on Oct 14 is one of the Molniya-3 class, the 42nd to be given the Molniya-3 name (two other Molniya-3 class satellites failed to reach the correct orbit and were called Kosmos-1175 and Kosmos-1305 in an attempt to conceal the failures). Meanwhile, according to NORAD, the 55th Molniya-1 satellite, launched in 1982, reentered on Oct 10; it had been taken out of service in 1984. The 15th Molniya-3 satellite, launched in 1981, reentered on Oct 19. The 46th Molniya-1, launched in 1980, reentered on Oct 22. It is possible that these reentries are only 'administrative decays', i.e. NORAD lost track of these elliptical orbit satellites ages ago and has decided to remove them from the list. Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 2 STS-55 OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 3 STS-53 OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-54 ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/STS-53/ET VAB Bay 3 ML2/STS-54 VAB Bay 1 ML3/ .-----------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS4 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : mcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | USA | | '-----------------------------------------------------------------------------'