Jonathan's Space Report No. 197 1994 May 24 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ MIR --- Progress M-23 was launched May 22 from Baykonur toward the Mir station. The older Progress M-22 cargo ferry was deorbited on May 23. Progress cargo ships are based on the Soyuz transport spaceship design, but carry a fuel section instead of the cosmonaut descent module. They supply water, air, food and fuel as well as carry new experiments and equipment for the crew. Progress M-23 is scheduled to dock at the port on the rear of the Kvant TKM-E astrophysical module. LAUNCHES -------- Launch of the USAF Rome Lab's P91-A (STEP 2) satellite was successfully carried out on May 19. The B-52 carrier aircraft took off from RW4/22 at Edwards AFB and flew out to the Point Arguello Warning Area over the Pacific. The Orbital Sciences Corp. Pegasus was dropped at 1703 UTC and all three stages fired placing the payload in orbit. However, the orbit achieved was only 603 x 832 km x 82 deg instead of the planned 833 km circular orbit. The low perigee is not a huge disaster, the old Scout did the same thing a number of times and had the flights counted as successes, and most missions would not be seriously affected by this sort of anomaly. However, the next Pegasus launch will most likely be delayed until the cause of the malfunction is understood and fixed. STEP 2 was built by TRW and is probably a lightsat in the Eagle series. It will study propagation of radio signals through the ionosphere. This Pegasus was the fifth of the winged boosters to be launched; all have reached orbit although the second one was only partially successful. Another Gorizont communications satellite for the US company Rimsat of Ft. Wayne, Indiana was orbited on May 19 by Proton from Baykonur. It will be placed over Eastern Asia at 142.5 deg E. The spacecraft is probably owned by AO Informkosmos, a Russian company in which Rimsat is a major holder; it is leased by Rimsat. The satellite, built by NPO Prikladnoi Mekhaniki of Krasnoyarsk, has both C and Ku band transponders. The first Rimsat Gorizont was launched in November 1993. The first Soviet Gorizont satellite was launched in 1978; the series is soon to be replaced by an improved spacecraft called Express. Information Wanted ------------------ This week's JSR Irregulars' Gold Medal goes to Bart de Pontieu (MPE), Kelly Beatty (Sky & Tel), and Mark Shaffer (BAe) for giving me info on the IRM kick motor. The AMPTE (Active Magnetospheric Particle Tracer Explorers) launch was a complicated one; three spacecraft were placed in geostationary transfer orbit by a three-stage Delta rocket. The Johns Hopkins APL-built CCE satellite separated and fired its Star 13 rocket to move to a lower inclination orbit. The IRM satellite, built by the German Max Planck MPE group, then fired its Hercules BE-3 motor to raise its apogee to more than 100 000 km. Finally the British UKS satellite separated from IRM (UKS didn't have propulsion of its own). The IRM satellite created three 'artifical comets' by releasing lithium and barium into the magnetosphere. The BE-3 "Alcyone" rocket has an interesting history, it was originally the retro-rocket used to try and land the Block II Ranger probes on the Moon in 1962. It was used on the Vela satellites as an apogee motor, as the third stage of the Redstone/SPARTA rocket used to launch Australia's first satellite WRESAT in 1967, and as the fifth stage of the Scout E-1 launch vehicle, used only once in 1974 to launch the Hawkeye satellite. This comes to a total of 27 flights that I am aware of, any more examples gratefully received. That question was so successful I'm going to try another fishing expedition. Does anyone have any information on the Redstone rockets launched in 1966/1967 from San Nicolas Island, CA as part of the US Army's Project Defender? I know there was at least one launch in Nov 1966. The Redstone was the rocket that launched Alan Shepard, and I have (partial) details on all its flights except for these Defender launches. Even the History Office at Redstone Arsenal had no record of them. Anyone with details on the launches from Fort Wingate, please get in touch too, as my info on these is pretty sketchy. I have records of 101 Redstone launches in all so far. 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 May 19 1703 P91-A (STEP 2) Pegasus Point Arguello WA Science 29A May 19 0201 Gorizont/Rimsat Proton/DM2 Baykonur Comsat 30A May 22 0431? Progress M-23 Soyuz-U Baykonur Cargo 31A Reentries --------- Mar 23 Progress M-21 Deorbited Apr 20 Endeavour Landed at Edwards AFB May 8 SEDS 2 deployer Reentered May 21 Kosmos-2274 Reentered May 23 Progress M-22 Deorbited 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-68 ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/RSRM-40 VAB Bay 3 STS-68 ML2/ ML3/RSRM-39/ET 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 | | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'