Jonathan's Space Report No. 224 1994 Dec 20 Cambridge, MA -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Close Call ---------- Minor planet 1994 XM1, a five-meter rock discovered by the Spacewatch telescope on Dec 9, passed within about 100000 km of Earth at 1900 UT on Dec 9. Orbit of 1994 XM1 is about 0.9 x 3.1 AU inclined at 5.6 deg to the ecliptic. (It came within lunar orbit, so I figure that makes it fair game for this newsletter :-) Shuttle ------- NASA has selected a new group of astronauts, its 15th since the Original Seven. The 19 new astronauts include ten pilots and nine mission specialists; five women and 14 men; 6 civilian and 13 military. The pilots include only two test pilots from Edwards Air Force Base, USAF Majs. Michael Bloomfield and Pamela Melroy (whom I believe to be the first Wellesley graduate to be an astronaut), and one from the Navy's Pax River test pilot base, USMC Capt. Frederick Sturckow. Two other USAF test pilots in the group are Maj. Steven Lindsey of Eglin AFB and Maj. Rick Husband, currently on an exchange leading RAF Tornado flight test at Boscome Down (near Stonehenge). LtCdr Joe Edwards, USN, is currently assigned to the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. The remaining four pilots are Lt Scott Altman, USN (Fighter Sqn 31, San Diego); Cdr Jeffrey Ashby, USN (CO of Fighter Sqn 94, near Fresno); Cdr Dominic Gorie, USN, F/A-18 pilot at Strike Fighter Sqn 106, near Jacksonville); and Lt Susan Still, USN, F-14 pilot from Fighter Sqn 101 at Virginia Beach. The three military mission specialists are Maj Michael Anderson, USAF, of Plattsburgh AFB, NY; Lt. Robert Curbeam, Jr., USN, an instructor at Annapolis; and Maj. Carlos Noriega, USMC, based at Okinawa. The civilian mission specialists are Dr. Kalpana Chawla from Overset Methods Inc, Los Altos, CA, who has a PhD in aerospace engineering from the Univ. of Colorado; Kathryn Hire, a Shuttle processing engineer from Lockheed Space Ops. Co. at KSC; Dr. Janet Kavandi, an engineer from Boeing with a PhD in chemistry from the U. of Washington; Dr Edward Lu, an astronomy postdoc at Hawaii, with a PhD in physics from Stanford; and Dr. Stephen Robinson, a research at NASA-Langley with a PhD in mechanical engineering from Stanford. This selection seems to mark a trend away from the practice of hiring JSC mission controllers and other Shuttle program insiders as mission specialists, but the biggest change is the high fraction of pilots in this group, the first time since 1969 that NASA has selected a group which is mostly pilot astronauts, perhaps making up for the last selection in which only four of 19 were pilots. From Mar 1995 to Mar 1996 the new group will be 'ascans', astronaut candidates in training, after which they will start to be assigned to missions. The astronauts selected in the late 1960s had to wait many years to get a flight (18 to 19 years in the cases of Don Lind, Karl Henize and Tony England, who finally flew in 1985), but recent groups have fared much better - the last two of the 1990 group are scheduled to have flown by March, and the 1987 group had all flown by 1992. The 1992 group has begun to fly, with all but four in training for missions slated for 1995. Meanwhile, one of the Apollo veterans has passed away: Stuart Roosa, CM Pilot for Apollo 14, died of pancreatitis on Dec 12 in Washington, DC. Col. Roosa, a former Edwards test pilot and a member of the 1966 astronaut group, left NASA in 1976. Mir --- On Dec 19 the Mir complex was in a 390 x 394 km x 51.6 deg orbit. As of Dec 20, Commander Aleksandr Viktorenko and Flight Engineer Yelena Kondakova have been in orbit for 77 days as part of the 17th main expedition (EO-17 crew). The station doctor, Valeriy Polyakov, has been in orbit for 346 days, and his record cumulative time in space over 2 missions is 587 days. Soyuz TM-20 and Progress M-25 remain docked to the station. Jim Oberg reports that Soyuz TM-20 is due to undock and redock in early January in a test of the automatic docking system. Recent Launches --------------- A Russian Al'tair class tracking and data relay satellite was launched from Baykonur on Dec 16. The satellite was named Luch ("Beam"). The three previous Al'tair satellites were: Kosmos-1700 1985 Oct 25 Kosmos-1897 1987 Nov 26 Kosmos-2054 1989 Dec 27 The launch is the 12th launch of Proton so far this year, with one more expected. Kosmos-2298 was launched from Plesetsk on Dec 20 into a 785 x 810 km x 74.0 deg orbit. Satellites are launched into this orbit at the rate of about one a year; Kosmos-2298 is the 48th to reach orbit since Kosmos-372 in 1970. Western analysts have suggested that the series are communications satellites for sensitive military or intelligence communications. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Nov 1 0037 Astra 1D Ariane 42P Kourou ELA2 Comsat 70A Nov 1 0931 Wind Delta 7925 Canaveral LC17B Science 71A Nov 2 0104 Kosmos-2293 Tsiklon-2 Baykonur LC90 EORSAT 72A Nov 3 1700 Atlantis Space Shuttle Kennedy LC39B Spaceship 73A Nov 4 0547 Resurs-O1 No. 3 Zenit-2 Baykonur LC45 Rem.sensing 74A Nov 4 1250 CRISTA-SPAS - Atlantis, LEO Science 73B Nov 11 0722 Progress M-25 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 75A Nov 20 0039 Kosmos-2294 ) Proton-K/DM-2 Baykonur LC200 Navsat 76A Kosmos-2295 ) Navsat 76B Kosmos-2296 ) Navsat 76C Nov 24 0916 Kosmos-2297 Zenit-2 Baykonur LC45 SIGINT 77A Nov 29 0254 Geo-IK Tsiklon-3 Plesetsk LC32 Geodetic 78A Nov 29 1021 Orion 1 Atlas IIA Canaveral LC36A Comsat 79A Nov 29 1702 DFH-3 Chang Zheng 3A Xichang Comsat 80A Dec 1 2255 Panamsat K2 Ariane 42P Kourou ELA2 Comsat FTO Dec 14 1421 Molniya-1T Molniya-M Plesetsk LC43 Comsat 81A Dec 16 1200? Luch Proton-K/DM-2 Baykonur Comsat 82A Dec 20 0515? Kosmos-2298 Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC132 Comsat 83A Reentries --------- Nov 4 Molniya-1 Reentered (1984-29A) Nov 4 Soyuz TM-19 Landed in Kazakhstan Nov 14 Atlantis Landed at Edwards AFB Dec 9 Kosmos-2238 Reentered Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia Palmdale OMDP - OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-63 Feb 2 OV-104 Atlantis OPF Bay 3 STS-71 May OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-67 Mar ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/RSRM-42/ET-68 VAB Bay 3 STS-63 ML2/RSRM-43 VAB Bay 1 STS-67 ML3/ .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS4 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@urania.harvard.edu | | USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/QEDT/jcm/jsr.html | ! ftp://sao-ftp.harvard.edu/pub/jcm/space/news/news.* | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'