Jonathan's Space Report No. 195 1994 May 9 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Shuttle ------- Endeavour returned to KSC aboard the NASA 911 carrier aircraft on May 2. Thanks to all those who passed on the identification of the aircraft. Endeavour has been towed to Orbiter Processing Facility Bay 1 and will be recycled for launch with the same Space Radar Lab payload in August. Assembly of the STS-65 stack is proceeding in the Vehicle Assembly Building with preparations for connecting the external tank to the solid boosters. The Spacelab module will be installed in orbiter Columbia this week. Launch of STS-65 is due in July. Mir ERRATUM ------------ My brain has been out to lunch recently - the physician cosmonaut aboard Mir is of course Valeriy Vladimirovich Polyakov, not Vladimir Polyakov as I have been typing recently. Thanks for everyone who caught that piece of stupidity. LAUNCHES -------- The Deep Space Program Science Experiment probe, known to its friends as Clementine, has completed mapping the Moon (and returned some spectacular images!). Dean Bakeris reports that Clementine left lunar orbit on May 4 at 0324:15 UTC. Perigee was due on May 8 at 0556, and apogee will be at 0530 on May 16, when a targeting maneuver will be performed. Second perigee will be around May 24, and Clementine will fly past the moon again on May 27 on its way to solar orbit. It will reach asteroid (1620) Geographos at 2116 UTC on Aug 31. It is hoped to send the probe on to fly by the unnumbered minor planet 1983 RD in October 1995. The second Titan 4 Centaur, TC-10, was launched from Cape Canaveral on May 3. The Titan solid boosters and core stages 1 and 2 fell in the Atlantic Ocean, and the first Centaur burn placed the Centaur and its payload into a parking orbit inclined at 57 deg (estimated). Observations from Europe of a bright comet like object over the US suggest that the Centaur made a second burn in the southern hemisphere to a highly elliptical orbit with apogee in the northern hemisphere. A third burn may have been made to change the orbital inclination about 3.5 hours after launch. The Centaur then vented its excess propellants, giving rise to the "comet". The best guess so far at the resulting orbit, based on observations from Italy and the Czech Republic, is a 12 hr period orbit around 64 degrees; a solution by Joel Runes gives 1323 x 39035 km x 64.4 deg, with TLEs as follows: 1 23098E 94026B 94123.83406471 .00000000 00000-0 00000 0 0 52 2 23098 64.4000 14.6349 7100000 266.5000 93.5000 2.00600000 29 Work by Mike McCants gives similar estimates; the eccentricity is rather uncertain. The object may be visible in binoculars to observers in the US around 03h UTC tonight. The payload, USA-103, is probably a signals intelligence satellite, the third in a series which is a followon to the National Security Agency's JUMPSEAT electronic monitoring series. The first two payloads in the series were deployed by the Shuttle and used an unknown upper stage (possibly an Orbus 7S solid motor) to enter their 12 hour orbits. Advanced JUMPSEAT spacecraft: Flight Payload Launch Date Initial Orbit Final Orbit Int'l Designation STS-28R USA-40 1989 Aug 8 401 x 502 x 57 ? 1989-61B STS-53 USA-89 1992 Dec 2 364 x 380 x 57 ? 1992-86B TC-10 USA-103 1994 May 3 250?x 600?x 57 1300?x39000?x64.4 1994-26A The final launch of the Scout rocket took place at 0247 UTC on May 9. It placed the MSTI-2 (Miniature Seeker Technology Integration) satellite in orbit for the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. The orbit is 360 x 461 km x 96.8 deg. Vehicle S218C was a Scout G-1 variant, consisting of an Algol 3A first stage, a Castor 2 second stage, an Antares 3 third stage, and a Thiokol Star 20 fourth stage. The launch took place from Space Launch Complex 5 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, which was originally Launch Complex D of Point Arguello Naval Missile Facility when it saw its first Scout launch in 1962. S218C was the 125th launch of an Algol-based Scout (including six launches of the USAF Blue Scout version); there were also 22 launches of a variant called Blue Scout Junior which omitted the first stage. Scout's first test flight was on Apr 18, 1960; the first successful orbital launch on 16 Feb 1961 (Explorer IX). Among Scout's famous payloads were: Transit VA-3, the first successful gravity gradient stabilized satellite; San Marco 1, Italy's first satellite; ESRO 2B, Europe's first joint satellite (ESRO was ESA's predecessor); Azur, Germany's first satellite; the Dutch satellite ANS; and Uhuru and Ariel 5, the early X-ray astronomy satellites. Recent Launches --------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Mar 22 0454 Progress M-22 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 19A Apr 9 1105 Endeavour Space Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 20A Space Radar Lab Apr 11 0749 Kosmos-2275 ) Proton/DM2 Baykonur LC81 Navigation 21A Kosmos-2276 ) Navigation 21B Kosmos-2277 ) Navigation 21C Apr 13 0604 GOES 8 Atlas Centaur I Canaveral LC36B Weather 22A Apr 23 0802 Kosmos-2278 Zenit-2 Baykonur LC45 SIGINT 23A Apr 26 0214 Kosmos-2279 Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC133 Navsat 24A Apr 28 1714 Kosmos-2280 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC31 Recon 25A May 3 1555 USA-103 Titan Centaur Canaveral LC41 SIGINT 26A May 4 0000 SROSS C2 ASLV Sriharikota Science 27A May 9 0247 MSTI-2 Scout G-1 Vandenberg SLC5 Technology 28A Reentries --------- Mar 15 SEDS 2 end mass Reentered Mar 18 Columbia Landed at KSC Mar 23 Progress M-21 Deorbited Apr 20 Endeavour Landed at Edwards AFB May 8 SEDS 2 deployer Reentered Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 2 STS-65 OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 3 STS-64 OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-59 ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/ VAB Bay 3 STS-68 ML2/ ML3/RSRM-39/ VAB Bay 1 STS-65 .-----------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS4 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@urania.harvard.edu | | USA | | '-----------------------------------------------------------------------------' ,