Jonathan's Space Report No. 174 1993 Nov 1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Shuttle ------- OV-102 Columbia landed on runway 22 at Edwards AFB at 1005:43 UTC on Nov 1 after 14 days and 12 minutes in space, the longest Shuttle flight to date. After 15 flights it has clocked up 2945 h 31 min, the most of any orbiter. 50-yr old Dr. Shannon Wells Lucid now has the most flight hours of any active NASA astronaut (838:51 over 4 flights compared to John Blaha's 789 hr, Bonnie Dunbar's 761 hr, and Rhea Seddon's 722 hr) and is the most experienced woman space traveller to date. Shannon Wells was born in Shanghai, China of American parents. Endeavour was rolled out to pad 39A for the HST Servicing Mission on Oct 28. Launch is due for Dec 1. Mir --- Progress M-20 docked with Mir on Oct 13 at 2324 UTC. Cosmonauts Tsibliev and Serebrov made a brief 38 min spacewalk on Oct 22; Serebrov became the first person to make 9 full spacewalks. The NASA astronaut Charles Conrad worked under depressurized conditions 10 times, but two of those were equipment dumps which only lasted a few minutes and didn't involve the astronaut leaving the spacecraft, and a third involved disassembly of a docking probe within the spacecraft. Although in each case the spacecraft was open to vacuum and the astronauts were only protected by their spacesuits, these are not normally included in lists of spacewalks. The recordholder for time spacewalking is Sergey Krikalyov, with 36 h 30 m over 7 occasions; US record is Gene Cernan with 25 h 24 m over 7 occasions. Serebrov has 27h 40m over 9 walks, some relatively brief. Launches -------- The Chinese Jian Bing satellite's reentry vehicle fired its deorbit motor successfully but, alas, in the wrong direction; the capsule ended up in a 187 x 3016 km orbit, starting from a low 196 x 251 km orbit. The first Intelsat VII satellite, Intelsat 701, was launched on Oct 22. INTELSAT is an intergovernmental consortium which operates the main global civil communications satellite network; Intelsat I (better known as Early Bird) was launched in 1965 and Intelsat 701 is the 49th Intelsat to be launched. The Intelsat VII series uses the Ford Aerospace (now Space Systems/Loral) FS-1300 satellite bus, which is derived from the earlier Intelsat V and Japan's Superbird. The larger Intelsat VI satellites which continue to provide the main transoceanic capacity use the Hughes HS389 bus. The Proton launch vehicle chalked up another successful flight on Oct 28, the second since its May launch failure. It orbited a Gorizont communications satellite. Another Delta 2 launch went up on Oct 26 with a Navstar navigation satellite. Kosmos-2265, launched on Oct 26, is in a 291 x 1573 km x 82.9 deg orbit. These orbital parameters are unusual for a Kosmos satellite but it is probably a small radar calibration or electronic intelligence satellite. Date Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. 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 KITSAT-OSCAR 25 Remote s,com 61C ITAmsat/OSCAR 26 Comsat 61F Eyesat 1/OSCAR 27 Comsat 61G Posat 1 ) Test 61D Healthsat 1 ) Comsat 61E Sep 30 1706 Raduga Proton/Blok DM Baykonur LC81 Comsat 62A Oct 5 1756 Landsat 6 Titan 23G Vandenberg SLC4W Remote s. FTO Oct 8 0800 Jian Bing Chang Zheng 2C Jiuquan Remote s. 63A Oct 11 2133 Progress M-20 Soyuz Baykonur LC2 Cargo 64A Oct 18 1453 Columbia ) Space Shuttle Kennedy LC39 Spaceship 65A Spacelab SLS 2) Oct 22 0646 Intelsat 701 Ariane Kourou Comsat 66A Oct 26 1301? Kosmos-2265 Kosmos Plesetsk ? 67A Oct 26 1704 Navstar GPS 34 Delta 7925 Canaveral LC17 Navsat 68A Oct 28 1500? Gorizont Proton Baykonur Comsat 69A Reentries --------- Sep 22 Discovery Landed at KSC Sep 28 Molniya-1 (1977-82A) reentered Oct 13 Progress M-19 Deorbited Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission OV-102 Columbia LEO STS-58 OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 3 STS-60 OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP OV-105 Endeavour LC39A STS-61 ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/ ML2/RSRM-23/ET-61/OV-105 LC39A STS-61 ML3/RSRM-35? VAB Bay 3 STS-60 .-----------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS4 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@urania.harvard.edu | | USA | | '-----------------------------------------------------------------------------'