Jonathan's Space Report No. 182 1994 Jan 31 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Shuttle ------- Mission STS-60 is still scheduled for Feb 3, carrying the Wake Shield Facility, the GAS Bridge Assembly, and the Spacehab-2 module. The external tank and solid rocket boosters for STS-62 have been assembled in the VAB; that mission is due for early March. Mir --- The Progress M-21 cargo craft was launched on Jan 28, to carry supplies to the EO-15 crew of Viktor Afanas'ev, Yuriy Usachyov and Vladimir Polyakov. The Progress M cargo carriers are robot ships based on the Soyuz spaceship design, but with the descent module replaced by fuel tanks and the orbital module stuffed with water, food, mail, and new equipment for the station. Progress M-21 was due to dock on Jan 30 with the Mir station. Launches -------- Four of the five launches so far this year have been Russian ones. Gals 1 is the first of a series of direct TV broadcasting satellites, built by NPO-PM of Krasnoyarsk. The Meteor-3 satellite launched on Jan 25 is a weather satellite built by VNII-EM for the Russian Hydrometeorological Service. It carries the French SCARAB Earth radiation budget experiment. The Ukrainian-built Tsiklon launch vehicle also carried a small 40 kg subsatellite, TUBSAT-B. TUBSAT-B was built for the German space agency DARA by the Technische Universitat Berlin (Technical University of Berlin). The satellites are in an 1187 x 1208 km x 82.6 deg orbit. The Clementine 1 (formally Deep Space Program Sensor Experiment or DSPSE) probe was launched into a 255 x 299 x 67.0 deg Earth orbit on Jan 25. The attached Star 37 kick motor was due to fire in early February to send it on a trip to the Moon; if the burn is successful, it will be the first lunar or planetary probe to be launched from the Vandenberg AFB site in California. The launch vehicle was a recycled Titan II ICBM, and the spacecraft was built by the Naval Research Lab for the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO, formerly SDIO - "Star Wars"). The idea is to test infrared and ultraviolet sensors after exposing them to the space environment. Clementine is scheduled to map the Moon and then go on to fly past minor planet (1620) Geographos. Date Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Jan 8 1005 Soyuz TM-18 Soyuz Baykonur LC1 Spaceship 01A Jan 20 0951? Gals 1 Proton Baykonur Comsat 02A Jan 25 0021 Meteor-3 ) Tsiklon Plesetsk Weather 03A Tubsat B ) Technology 03B Jan 25 1634 Clementine 1 Titan 23G Vandenberg SLC4 Spaceprobe 04A Jan 28 0210? Progress M-21 Soyuz Baykonur Cargo 05A Reentries --------- Jan 14 Soyuz TM-17 Landed Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 2 STS-62 OV-103 Discovery LC39A STS-60 OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-59 ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/RSRM-36?/ET-62 VAB Bay 1 STS-62 ML2/ ML3/RSRM-35/ET-61/OV-103 LC39A STS-60 Errata: 1993-35A was a Molniya-1T, not a Molniya-3 as reported in JSR 181. There is still some confusion as to the exact designations of the small satellites launched with SPOT 3. Krikalyov is designated a Mission Specialist rather than just a Payload Specialist on the STS-60 crew (JSR 180). .-----------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS4 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@urania.harvard.edu | | USA | | '-----------------------------------------------------------------------------' ,