Jonathan's Space Report

Apr 19, 1990 (no.35)
----------------------------------------------------

The launch of orbiter Discovery and the Hubble Space Telescope
has been rescheduled for Tuesday, Apr 24.

Anatoli Solov'yov (Komandir) and Aleksandr Balandin (Bortinzhener)
continue in orbit aboard the Mir complex. The Soyuz TM-9 transport
and the Progress M-3 freighter are currently at the station. 
Solov'yov and Balandin have been in space for 67 days. The launch
of the Kristall module has been delayed until June.

The second of the two satellites retrieved by Discovery in 1984, Palapa
B-2, was relaunched into orbit on Apr 13 by a Delta 6925 rocket from
Cape Canaveral.  (The first was Asiasat, formerly Westar 6, relaunched
last week from China.) Palapa is owned by the Indonesian
telecommunications agency Perumtel and will be used to relay
communications and TV between the islands of the Indonesian archipelago. 
It is a Hughes HS-376 class comsat, and is the third Palapa B to reach
stationary orbit. Palapa was owner by the insurers after recovery,
and then sold to Sattel, Inc. which later sold it back to the Indonesians.
(If anyone can shed light on the complicated ownership history of Westar,
please let me know.)

Three small DoD research satellites were launched by an Atlas E from
Vandenberg on Apr 11.  The Atlas carried an Altair III upper stage left
over from the Scout program.  (Reports that the vehicle was an
"Atlas-Scout" are rather an overstatement; the Altair is the fourth
stage of the Scout vehicle.) The three satellites are: Polar Orbiting
Geomagnetic Survey, Transceiver Experiment, and Selective Communications
Experiment.  The first will map the Earth's magnetic field, while the
other two will study radio communications through the ionosphere. 

NASA's Pegsat released its first barium canister on Apr 15.  The barium
spreads along the magnetic field lines, allowing the field to be traced. 

The Kosmos-2062 recon satellite landed on Apr 5.

Eight small Soviet Navy communications relays, Kosmos-2064 to Kosmos-2071,
were launched on a single Kosmos rocket on Apr 6. This is the 43rd launch
of this type since the program began in 1970. A new program began in 1985,
with 6 satellites at a time launched on the newer Tsiklon vehicle, and
this may eventually supersede the 8-satellite program.

Kosmos-2072 was launched on Apr 13. No details yet.

Glavkosmos launched a Foton materials processing satellite on a two week
mission on Apr 11.  This is the seventh launch of a Foton (the 3rd to be
officially named) and carries a French experiment among its payload. 
The Foton uses a Vostok spacecraft bus and carries several processing
furnaces to process crystals and pharmaceutical materials.  There is one
flight per year, each April. Launches are from Plesetsk aboard a Soyuz
rocket.

Summary of previous Foton flights:
ID	Name		Date			Dur(d)	Orbit (km, deg)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
FotA1	Kosmos-1645	1985 Apr 16-29		13	215x390x62.8
FotA2	Kosmos-1744	1986 May 21-Jun  4	14	219x373x62.8
FotA3	Kosmos-1841	1987 Apr 24-May  8	14	218x381x62.8
FotA4	Foton		1988 Apr 14-28		14	219x374x62.8
FotA5	Foton		1989 Apr 26-May 12	16	222x378x62.8
FotA6	Foton		1990 Apr 11-*


(c) 1990 Jonathan McDowell
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