Jonathan's Space Report No. 348 1998 Jan 24 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The annual launch log (JSR 347) is on the web at http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/log.1997 and an updated geostationary log is at http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/geo.html Shuttle and Mir --------------- The Kvant-2 airlock hatch, partially repaired in a spacewalk on Jan 9, is still leaking slightly. Solov'yov and Wolf made a 3-hour EVA on Jan 14 to inspect the station exterior. Space Shuttle Endeavour took off on Jan 22 on mission STS-89. Launch was at 0248 UTC; Endeavour flew up the eastern seabord of the US into a 51 degree orbit, and I was easily able to see it, in the seconds prior to main engine cutoff, from the street in downtown Cambridge. Crew is Terrence Wilcutt, Joe Edwards, James Reilly, Michael Anderson, Andy Thomas and Bonnie Dunbar (all of NASA) and Salizhan Sharipov (Russian Air Force). Thomas will replace David Wolf aboard Mir, and will be the final NASA long-stay visitor to Mir. Endeavour docked with the SO module on Mir at 2014 UTC on Jan 24. Endeavour's cargo bay contains: Bay 1 Tunnel Adapter Bay 3 Orbiter Docking System/External Airlock Bay 4-7 Transfer Tunnel Bay 8-12 Spacehab Double Module Bay 13P GABA carrier with G-141, G-145 Bay 13S GABA carrier with G-093, G-432 The four Getaway Special cans are G-141 and G-145, a pair of German materials processing experiments, G-093, a University of Michigan fluid dynamics experiment, and G-432, a Chinese materials processing payload. The orbiter middeck carries CEBAS, a German/US biological module for aquatic organisms including fish and snails, and a locker containing a dinosaur skull carried as part of a museum educational program. (As far as I know, this is not the start of a regular `dinosaurs in space' project, and so is unrelated to the forthcoming flights of Glenn and Ryumin). The Spacehab carries supplies for Mir, and a test of an X-ray crystallography detector for the Space Station. Recent Launches --------------- Israel launched a three-stage Shaviyt vehicle from Palamchim Air Force Base on Jan 22, attempting to place the 'Ofeq-4 imaging satellite into orbit. The failure seems to have occurred during second stage burn. The Shaviyt vehicle launches west from Israel over the Mediterranean. The NEAR asteroid rendezvous spacecraft flew past Earth on Jan 23 at 0723 UTC on Jan 23, 530 km above Iran. Sun glint from the solar panels briefly made NEAR a naked eye object from the Western hemisphere. Lunar Prospector has now reached its final mapping orbit. After trim burns it was in a 99 x 100 km circular orbit, but the uneven lunar gravity field soon perturbed this to 80 x 120 km. Errata ------ Maxim Tarasenko spotted two goofs in JSR347 - first, the launch on Dec 20 was Progress M-37 not Progress M-36; secondly, the Parus-class satellite Kosmos-2346 (1997-52A) was made by AO Polyot, not NPO PM. Table of Recent Launches ------------------------ Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Jan 7 0228 Lunar Prospector Athena-2 SP Florida LC46 Probe 01A Jan 10 0032 Skynet 4D Delta 7925 Canaveral LC17B Comsat 02A Jan 22 1300 'Ofeq-4 Shaviyt Palamchim Imaging F01 Jan 23 0248 Endeavour Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 03A Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-90 Apr 2 OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-91 May 28 OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP OV-105 Endeavour LEO STS-89 Jan 22 MLP/SRB/ET/OV stacks MLP1/ MLP2/RSRM65 VAB Bay 3 STS-90 MLP3/ LC39A STS-89 .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS6 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@urania.harvard.edu | | USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/jsr.html | | Back issues: ftp://sao-ftp.harvard.edu/pub/jcm/space/news/news.* | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'