Jonathan's Space Report No. 161 1993 Jul 12 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Shuttle ------- Launch of STS-51 is scheduled for Jul 17. The payloads are the ACTS satellite and the ORFEUS-SPAS satellite. ACTS, the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite, is a NASA satellite built around Martin Marietta Astro Space's GE4000 bus. It will carry out experiments in the 30/20 GHz Ka-band and is intended to help development of future commercial comsats. The Japanese Superbird comsats have already experimented with the Ka band. ACTS will use Orbital Sciences' TOS (Transfer Orbit Stage) to reach geostationary orbit. This will be the second TOS flight; the first launched Mars Observer aboard a Titan 3. ORFEUS-SPAS is a German astronomical satellite. It will be deployed by the RMS arm and retrieved about 6 days later. The main instrument is the 1-meter Orfeus (Orbiting and Retrievable Far and Extreme UV Spectrometer) telescope with EUV (400-1150A) and far UV (900-1250A) spectrometers with high spectral resolution. A secondary experiment is the Princeton Interstellar Medium Absorption Profile Spectrograph which will study very fine structure in ultraviolet absorption lines caused by interstellar gas in stellar spectra. The ORFEUS program is managed by the German DARA space agency and the associated DLR institute; the satellite uses the ASTRO-SPAS bus made by MBB (Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm). The ASTRO-SPAS is double the size of the original SPAS (Shuttle Pallet Satellite) which has been used on several missions (STS-7, STS-11, STS-39). An experiment-carrying truss (USS) based on the original SPAS structure (but without the avionics and attitude control) was also flown on the Spacelab D-1 and D-2 missions. The STS-51 mission will also feature another of the DTO-1210 series of training spacewalks, by mission specialist astronauts Maj. Carl Walz and Dr. James Newman. Commander and Pilot of STS-51 are Capt. Frank Culbertson and William Readdy; the third mission specialist is Cdr. Daniel Bursch. Only Culbertson and Readdy have flown previously. Mir --- Progress M-18 undocked from Mir's front port at around 1725 UTC on Jul 3, and Soyuz TM-17 docked at the same port only 20 minutes later at 1745 UTC. The Progress vehicle was deorbited the next day. Meanwhile, Progress M-17 remains docked to the Kvant rear port. Astronauts Tsibliev, Serebrov, Manakov, Poleshchuk, and Haignere are carrying out experiments aboard the station; the latter three will return to Earth aboard Soyuz TM-16 on Jul 22. Launches -------- Erratum: I have corrected some more of the launch times in the table. Erratum No 2: The tether experiment launched on Jun 26 was not SEDS 2. The PMG experiment uses somewhat different hardware from the SEDS deployer, although it is for the most part built by the same groups. The PMG tether remains attached to the Delta stage in a 192 x 850 km x 26 deg orbit. Kosmos-2258 was launched on Jul 8. It is an electronic intelligence ocean surveillance satellite (EORSAT) used to track surface shipping, the third launched this year (with Kosmos-2238 and Kosmos-2244) after a two year break with no launches. The spacecraft is in a 404 x 417 km orbit inclined 65 degrees. The orbit is maintained in phase with the other spacecraft with a low thrust engine. The spacecraft is made either by NPO Mashinstroeniye of Moskva or possibly by NPO Arsenal of Sankt-Peterburg. The Tsiklon-M 11K69 launch vehicle is a two stage rocket based on the R-36 ICBM (known as SS-9 by NATO). The R-36/Tsiklon series of rockets are built by the Ukranian space company NPO Yuzhnoe in Dniepropetrovsk; the three stage civilian Tsiklon has been commercially available for some time, but the older Tsiklon-M has only recently been declassified. Date Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Jun 16 0417 Kosmos-2251 Kosmos R-14 Plesetsk Comsat 36A Jun 21 1307 Endeavour Shuttle Kennedy Spaceship 37A Jun 24 0412 Kosmos-2252 ) Tsiklon Plesetsk Comsat 38A Kosmos-2253 ) Comsat 38B Kosmos-2254 ) Comsat 38C Kosmos-2255 ) Comsat 38D Kosmos-2256 ) Comsat 38E Kosmos-2257 ) Comsat 38F Jun 25 0018 Galaxy 4H Ariane 42P Kourou Comsat 39A Jun 25 0820 Resurs-F Soyuz Plesetsk Remote sens. 40A Jun 25 2330 RADCAL Scout G-1 Vandenberg Calib. 41A Jun 26 1327 Navstar GPS 39) Delta 7925 Canaveral Navsat 42A PMG ) Tether Jul 1 1433 Soyuz TM-17 Soyuz 2 Baykonur Spaceship 43A Jul 8 0715 Kosmos-2258 Tsiklon-M Baykonur EORSAT 44A Reentries --------- Jun 7 Kosmos-2240 Landed in Kazakhstan? Jun 20 Resurs-F2 Landed in Kazakhstan Jul 1 Endeavour Landed at Kennedy Space Center Jul 1 EURECA Returned to Earth aboard Endeavour Jul 4 Progress M-18 Deorbited Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 2 STS-58 OV-103 Discovery LC39B STS-51 OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-61 ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/RSRM-34 VAB Bay 3 STS-58 ML3/RSRM-33/ET-59/OV-103 LC39B STS-51 Thanks to Mike Fennell and Vladimir Agapov for information in this issue. .-----------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS4 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@urania.harvard.edu | | USA | | '-----------------------------------------------------------------------------'