Jonathan's Space Report No. 363 1998 Jun 18 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Mir --------------- Discovery docked with the SO module on Mir at 1700 UTC on June 4. Andy Thomas became part of the Discovery crew, Valeriy Ryumin carried out an inspection tour of Mir, and NASA equipment was retrieved from the station. Discovery undocked at 1601 UTC on Jun 8, ending NASA participation in the Mir program. STS-91 landed on Runway 15 at Kennedy Space Center at 1800 UTC on Jun 12. Discovery is now in Orbiter Processing Bay 2 and will be turned around to perform the next Shuttle mission, STS-95 in October. The lack of Ku-band coverage meant that the AMS experiment was only able to send back a small amount of data in real time, but reportedly AMS did detect cosmic-ray antiprotons as expected. GRAB Declassified ------------------ On Jun 17 the National Reconnaissance Office and the Naval Research Lab (NRO and NRL) declassified GRAB, the first signals intelligence satellite. GRAB was first launched in June 1960, shortly before the first successful flight of the CORONA imaging satellite. It carried receivers to catalog and characterize Soviet air defence radars. It also carried a scientific solar X-ray detector as a cover story - the satellite was given the cover name SOLRAD. It was launched together with TRANSIT 2A. Five GRAB satellites were launched, not counting an inert dummy used to prove the dual satellite launching technique. The declassification did not reveal which the other satellites were, but my reconstruction is: Dummy 1960 Apr 13 (with Transit 1B) GRAB 1 1960 Jun 22 (with Transit 2A) GRAB 2 1960 Nov 30 (with Transit 3A, failed to orbit) GRAB 3 1961 Jun 29 (with Transit 4A, second success) GRAB 4 1962 Jan 24 (with other NRL satellites, failed to orbit) GRAB 5 1962 Apr 26 (on a Scout, failed to orbit) At the time, the name GREB was used in open sources some of the time, presumably just a misprint. GRAB stands for Galactic Radiation And Background, while GREB supposedly stood for Galactic Radiation Experiment Background. Neither name makes much sense. After mid-1962 , GRAB successor satellites were launched under the auspices of the NRO, but these haven't been declassified yet. The GRAB satellite was NRL's first satellite after the Vanguard program, and it used the 20-inch Vanguard sphere as its structure. Thus, the purely civilian Vanguard program quickly led to a military successor; work on GRAB began around the time of the first successful Vanguard launch. GRAB data was given by NRL to both Strategic Air Command (to help bombers figure out how to avoid Soviet radars) and NSA. See my 1997 JBIS paper (Vol 50, p 427) for more on NRL's early satellites. While at NRL, I got to see the flight ICM (Interim Control Module for Space Station). ICM has APAS type docking ports on each face. It is launched in the Shuttle attached to a large cylindrical fairing at the far end of wh ich are trunnions which attach to the payload bay. Apparently ICM and cylinder swing up out of the bay somehow and then ICM is placed on the ODS by the RMS arm? The Shuttle/ICM then docks with the Zarya tug. No word on when ICM will fly; that still depends on the politics of persuading the Russian government to support completion of the SM module. The ICM vehicle has some propulsion work still to do and doesn't have its docking ports yet, but I understand things are moving full steam ahead. I also got to hear a talk by Milt Rosen, parent of the Viking and Vanguard rockets, who seems in fine form and gave an engaging account of the Vanguard program, emphasizing its successes in the end, seeding NASA's space science program and leading to the Delta rocket. Likewise Roger Easton, who talked about the early NRL and rival proposals which led to the GPS navigation satellites. Recent Launches --------------- A Hughes HS-376HP spin-stabilized comsat, Thor III, was launched for Telenor Satellite Services AS of Oslo by Boeing on Jun 11. The Delta 7925 launch vehicle placed Thor III in geostationary transfer orbit. Delta's second stage entered a low circular orbit, then raised apogee to about 1400 km, then in a third burn circularized at that altitude and separated from the third stage, which delivered the payload to a high perigee transfer orbit. The Delta stage 2 then made a fourth burn to lower perigee again so that it would reenter quickly. The Thor III satellite will use a Thiokol Star 30 motor to circularize its orbit at geostationary altitude. The RVSN (Russian Strategic Rocket Forces) launched six Strela-3 military communications satellites on Jun 15 with a 11K68 Tsiklon-3 launch vehicle. The circularization burn by the S5M third stage seems to have gone awry, leaving the satellites in a more elliptical orbit than usual, 1300 x 1900 km. The RVSN is quoting this as the first multiple launch by the Rocket Forces, which is not quite true - RVSN's space forces did multiple launches since the early 1960s, but those space forces were later made an independent agency, the VKS. This is the first multiple launch since the VKS was disbanded last year and launch operations returned to the authority of the RVSN. A Minuteman ICBM was probably launched on a suborbital flight test from Vandenberg's LF-26 silo to Kwajalein missile range on June 3. I haven't had confirmation of the flight yet. Table of Recent Launches ------------------------ Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. May 2 0916 Iridium 69 CZ-2C/SD Taiyuan Comsat 26A Iridium 71 Comsat 26B May 7 0853 Kosmos-2351 Molniya-M Plesetsk Early Warn 27A May 7 2345 Echostar 4 Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur Comsat 28A May 9 0138 USA 139 Titan Centaur Canaveral SLC40 Sigint 29A May 13 1552 NOAA 15 Titan 2 Vandenberg SLC4W Weather 30A May 14 2212 Progress M-39 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 31A May 17 2116 Iridium 70) Delta 7920 Vandenberg SLC2W Comsat 32A Iridium 72) Comsat 32B Iridium 73) Comsat 32C Iridium 74) Comsat 32D Iridium 75) Comsat 32E May 30 1000 Zhongwei 1 CZ-3B Xichang Comsat 33A Jun 2 2206 Discovery ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 34A Spacehab ) Jun 11 0035 Thor 3 Delta 7925 Canaveral LC17A Comsat 35A Jun 15 2258 Kosmos-2352 ) Tsiklon-3 Plesetsk LC32 Comsat 36A Kosmos-2353 ) Comsat 36B Kosmos-2354 ) Comsat 36C Kosmos-2355 ) Comsat 36D Kosmos-2356 ) Comsat 36E Kosmos-2357 ) Comsat 36F Current Shuttle Processing Status __________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-93 Unknown OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-95 Oct 29 OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-88 Unknown MLP/SRB/ET/OV stacks MLP1/ MLP2/ MLP3/ .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/back | | Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@head-cfa.harvard.edu, (un)subscribe jsr | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'