Jonathan's Space Report No. 366 1998 Jul 11 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Mir --------------- The next Shuttle mission is STS-95, in October; best wishes to all of the folks down at KSC, hoping their homes have escaped the depredations of the Florida wildfires. Talgat Musabaev and Nikolai Budarin are continuing work aboard the Mir complex. Launch of the replacement crew of Padalka and Avdeev has slipped a couple of weeks to mid-August. On Jun 30 Mir was in a 367 x 377 km x 51.6 deg orbit; the orbit will be slowly lowered over the next year prior to Mir's deliberate reentry. Recent Launches --------------- The Japanese Planet-B probe has been renamed Nozomi ("Hope"). Nozomi is a project of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Sciences (ISAS), Japan's scientific space agency. The M-V-3 launch vehicle took off from Kagoshima Space Center; the third stage and payload entered a 146 x 417 km x 31.1 deg parking orbit. The KM-V1 kick (fourth) stage then fired to place Nozomi in a 359 x 401491 km x 28.6 deg deep orbit, from which it will make lunar and Earth gravity assist passes to increase its energy for solar orbit insertion and the cruise to Mars. M-V-3 was the second M-V launch (M-V-2, carrying the Lunar A probe, has been delayed). Thanks to T. Imachi for information on the kick stage. On Jul 7 at 0315 UTC Russia carried out the first satellite launch from a submarine. The Shtil'-1 launch vehicle is a converted R-29RM (RSM-54) three stage liquid propellant submarine launched ballistic missile made by the Makeev design bureau; the satellite payload is placed in the standard Shtil' reentry vehicle. The launch plaform was the K-407 `Novomoskovsk', a 667BDRM Del'fin class submarine of the Russian Northern Fleet's 3rd Flotilla, from a range in the Barents Sea off the coast of the Kol'skiy Peninsula, at approximately 35.3 deg E 69.3 deg N. This is the first orbital launch of a rocket from the GRTs KB Makeev and the first orbital launch carried out by the VMF (Voenno-Morskiy Flot, the Russian Navy). The Shtil'-1 launched the German 8 kg Tubsat-N `nanosatellite' and its companion 3 kg Tubsat-N1. Tubsat-N entered a 400 x 776 km x 78.9 deg orbit. Both Tubsat-N and Tubsat-N1 carry a small store-forward communications payload which will be used to keep track of transmitters placed on vehicles, migrating animals, and marine buoys. They are owned, operated and built by the Technische Universitat Berlin (TUB). TUB's earlier satellites were Tubsat-A, launched on an Ariane in Jul 1991, and Tubsat-B, launched on an 11K68 Tsiklon-3 from Plesetsk in Jan 1994. Thanks to Igor Lissov, Asif Siddiqi, Steve Zaloga and Veit Zimmermann for background info. The 11K77 Zenit-2 launch vehicle returned to service on Jul 10 with the launch of the Resurs-O1 No. 4 satellite from Baykonur. Resurs-O1, built by VNII Elektromekhaniki and based on the Meteor weather satellites, is a Russian civil remote sensing satellite analogous to the Landsats. The satellite may also be designated Resurs-O2 No. 1 according to some sources. As well as remote sensing equipment, the satellite carries the Belgian LLMS (Little LEO Messaging System) communications payload for the IRIS system. The satellite entered an 815 x 818 km x 98.8 deg sun-synchronous orbit; the launch appears to have been fully successful. This launch was critical in restoring confidence in the Zenit vehicle prior to planned launches of Globalstar satellites from Baykonur and the first Sea Launch flights using a three-stage Zenit. Four subsatellites were launched with Resurs-O1 No. 4. They are Fasat-Bravo, a 50 kg Microbus class test satellite built by Surrey Satellite for the Chilean Air Force, Safir 2, a German space agency 60 kg relay satellite built by OHB System of Bremen, TMSAT, another Uosat Microbus-class payload built by Surrey Satellite for the Thai Microsatellite Co. of Bangkok and carrying a combined Earth observation and data comms. payload, and Gurwin Techsat 1B, built by the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and replacing an earlier Techsat which failed to orbit in 1995. The Kosmos-2359 recon satellite manuevered to its operational orbit of 240 x 302 km x 64.9 deg on Jun 27. The Orihime and Hikoboshi satellites undocked and redocked on Jul 7 in its FP-1 test of automated docking systems. Despite the claims of the NASDA space agency that this is a first, automated Russian craft have docked on many occasions since the Kosmos-186/188 docking in 1968. Table of Recent Launches ------------------------ Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Jun 2 2206 Discovery ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 34A Spacehab ) Jun 10 0035 Thor 3 Delta 7925 Canaveral LC17A Comsat 35A Jun 15 2258 Kosmos-2352 ) Tsiklon-3 Plesetsk LC32/1 Comsat 36A Kosmos-2353 ) Comsat 36B Kosmos-2354 ) Comsat 36C Kosmos-2355 ) Comsat 36D Kosmos-2356 ) Comsat 36E Kosmos-2357 ) Comsat 36F Jun 18 2248 Intelsat 805 Atlas 2AS Canaveral LC36A Comsat 37A Jun 24 1830 Kosmos-2358 Soyuz-U Plesetsk Recon 38A Jun 25 1400 Kosmos-2359 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC31 Recon 39A Jul 1 Molniya-3 Molniya-M Plesetsk Comsat 40A Jul 3 1812 Nozomi M-5 Kagoshima Mars probe 41A Jul 7 0315 Tubsat-N ) Shtil'-1 K-407,Barents Comsat 42A Tubsat-N1 ) Comsat 42B Jul 10 0627? Resurs-O1 No. 4 ) Zenit-2 Baykonur LC45 Rem. Sens. 43A Fasat-Bravo ) TMSAT ) SAFIR-2 ) Gurwin Techsat 1B) 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 .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'