Jonathan's Space Report No. 170 1993 Sep 28 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Thanks to Vladimir Agapov and Joel Runes for info included in last week's report and in this one. Apologies to sci.space.news readers; due to a problem with our new news software my posts have not been getting to the net. Shuttle ------- Columbia/STS-58 is due for launch on Oct 14. Mir --- The Expedition 14 crew of Vasiliy Tsibliev and Aleksandr Serebrov continue in orbit aboard the Mir complex. They have made three spacewalks recently. The first one was on Sep 16 at 0557 UT and lasted 4 h 18 min. The second was on Sep 20 at 0352 UT and lasted 3h 13 min. The third one was on Sep 28 and was scheduled to be a 4 hr 43 min spacewalk beginning at 0120 UTC. The Sep 16 EVA overlapped with the spacewalk from Discovery for 1h 43 min; this is the first time 4 people have been spacewalking at once, and the first time American and Russian cosmonauts have spacewalked at the same time. (An earlier pair of EVAs this year, Manakov/Poleshchuk on Jun 18 and Low/Wisoff on Jun 25, were separated by only a week; otherwise there have been only three cases of Russian and American spacewalks occuring within a month of each other. The Russians made the first spacewalk but then only made one more between 1965 and 1977, by which time the Gemini, Apollo and Skylab programs were long over; then they started doing lots of EVAs from Salyut and Mir, but until this year spacewalks from the Shuttle were relatively rare.) Launches -------- The first launch of the Indian Space Research Organization's PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) ended in failure on Sep 20. However, all four stages burnt well, which is encouraging for future flights. The problem was at second stage separation when the vehicle ended up pointing the wrong way. The IRS-1E payload ended in the ocean; it was a remote sensing satellite built from the IRS-1 engineering model. With the failure of two out of three ASLV launches with Streched Rohini (SROSS) satellites, ISRO now has three out of the last four orbital attempts in the drink. However, considering that these attempts were all tests of new launch vehicles, this isn't quite as bad as it sounds, and hopefully the second PSLV launch, scheduled for next year, will be successful. ISRO's launch site is the Sriharikota Range (SHAR). Indian IRS remote sensing program: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Satellite Launch Date Launch Vehicle Site Orbit IRS-1 1988 Mar 17 8A92M Vostok Baykonur 870x914 km x 99.0 deg IRS-1B 1991 Aug 29 8A92M Vostok Baykonur 862x918 km x 99.2 deg IRS-1E 1993 Sep 20 PSLV-1 SHAR - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Indian launch vehicle record: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Satellite Launch Date Launch Vehicle Site Orbit Rohini RS-1 1979 Aug 10 SLV-3-01 SHAR - Rohini RS-1 1980 Jul 18 SLV-3-02 SHAR 305x919 km x 44.7 deg Rohini RS-D-1 1981 May 31 SLV-3-03 SHAR 186x416 km x 46.3 deg Rohini RS-D-2 1983 Apr 17 SLV-3-04 SHAR 388x852 km x 46.6 deg SROSS 1 1987 Mar 24 ASLV-01 SHAR - SROSS 2 1988 Jul 12 ASLV-02 SHAR - SROSS 3 1992 May 20 ASLV-03 SHAR 246x396 km x 46.0 deg IRS-1E 1993 Sep 20 PSLV-01 SHAR - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Meanwhile the Ariane 4 had another successful launch in its 40 configuration on Sep 26, chalking up 30 successes out of 31 launches, compared with rival McDonnell Douglas Delta's 36 out of 36. The Ariane's main payload was the 1900 kg SPOT 3 remote sensing satellite. Also on board was a passive 48 kg spherical geodetic satellite, Stella, and an ASAP package (Ariane Structure for Auxiliary Payloads). Stella was built by the French space agency CNES (but apparently will be used by a German agency, can anyone confirm this?) The Ariane ASAP deployed five microsatellites. First is Uribyol 2, built by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology for SATREC Korea; it carries CCD cameras, store/forward communication equipment and a radiation detector. The spacecraft is based on the British Uosat bus developed by the University of Surrey's Surrey Satellite Technology Labs (SSTL). POSAT 1 is the first Portuguese satellite. Also using the 50 kg Uosat bus, it was built by SSTL in collaboration with engineers from the Portuguese national engineering lab LNETI. It carries an earth imaging camera, a GPS receiver, and a digital signal processing experiment. Healthsat 1, a Uosat bus built by SSTL for the American company SatelLife, will be used as a packet radio satellite to link up doctors in Africa. The last two satellites are even smaller, using the 12 kg bus developed by a US company, Interferometrics. Interferometrics' Eyesat A carries a small experiment for monitoring of mobile industrial equipment (i.e., at least at first, tracking truckers). ITAmsat is an Italian amateur radio satellite, built by Interferometrics for the ITAmsat organization and the ARI (Associazione Radioamatori Italiani). Date Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Aug 24 1045 Resurs-F1 Soyuz Plesetsk Remote s. 53A Aug 30 1238 Navstar GPS 35 Delta 7925 Canaveral LC17 Navigation 54A Aug 31 0440 Meteor-2 Tsiklon Plesetsk LC32 Weather 55A Aug 31 1520 Temisat - Meteor-2,LEO 55C Sep 3 1117 UHF F2 Atlas I AC-75 Canaveral LC36 Comsat 56A Sep 7 1325 Kosmos-2262 Soyuz Baykonur Recon 57A Sep 12 1145 Discovery Shuttle Kennedy LC39B Spaceship 58A Sep 12 2113 ACTS TOS Discovery, LEO Comsat 58B Sep 13 1506 ORFEUS-SPAS - Discovery, LEO Astronomy 58C Sep 16 0736 Kosmos-2263 Zenit Baykonur LC45 SIGINT 59A Sep 17 0043 Kosmos-2264 Tsiklon-M Baykonur LC90 EORSAT 60A Sep 20 0012 IRS-1E PSLV Sriharikota Remote s. FTO Sep 26 0145 SPOT 3 ) Ariane 40 Kourou ELA 2 Remote s. 61A Stella ) Geodesy 61B Uribyol 2 ) Remote s,com 61C Posat 1 ) Test 61D Healthsat 1 ) Comsat 61E Eyesat A ) Comsat 61F ITAmsat ) Comsat 61G Reentries --------- Aug 5 Kosmos-2260 Landed Aug 18 Molniya-3 (22) Reentered Aug 28 Meteor-Priroda (77-57A) Reentered Sep 10 Resurs-F Landed Sep 22 Discovery Landed at KSC Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission OV-102 Columbia LC39B STS-58 OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 3 STS-60 OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-61 ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/RSRM-34/ET-57/OV-102 LC39B STS-58 ML2/RSRM-23/ VAB Bay 1 STS-61 ML3/ Refurb .-----------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS4 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@urania.harvard.edu | | USA | | '-----------------------------------------------------------------------------'