Jonathan's Space Report No. 382 1998 Dec 12 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Station ------------------------ Endeavour is docked to the International Space Station, consisting of PMA-2, Unity, PMA-1 and Zarya. The vehicles are in a 386 x 401 km x 51.6 deg orbit. Ross and Newman made the first spacewalk to connect up cables with Zarya. Hatch open on the Tunnel Adapter was at 2210 UTC on Dec 7, and the airlock was repressurized at 0532 UTC on Dec 8. The second EVA, to install antennas, was from Dec 9 at 2033 UTC to Dec 10 at 0335 UTC. A third EVA was planned for Dec 12. Erratum: I keep misspelling the location of the organization formerly known as McDonnell Douglas. It is Huntington Beach, not Huntingdon Beach. The Huntington Beach unit built the PMA-1 and PMA-2 docking adapters used on the Station. AXAF ---- The external tank for mission STS-93 has now been connected to the solid rocket boosters. The AXAF observatory is still in California, and will probably be shipped to Florida in January for a launch in March/April. Recent Launches --------------- Arianespace Flight V114 roared into orbit on Dec 6 carrying the Satmex 5 satellite. The Ariane 42L rocket entered a 211 x 21516 km x 7.0 deg subsynchronous orbit from which the Hughes HS-601HP satellite will use its apogee engine to raise perigee and then apogee to reach geostationary orbit. Satmex 5 is operated by Satellites Mexicanos S.A. de C.V, a company (partly owned by Loral) which has taken over from the Mexican Telecoms Ministry which operated the Morelos satellites. Satmex 5 will replace Morelos 2. The V114 launch preceded the Pegasus/SWAS launch less than 15 minutes. Satmex 5 mass was 4135 kg at launch; I don't have a figure for the dry mass. It carries the XIPS ion engine stationkeeping system. The V114 launch preceded the Pegasus/SWAS launch by only 15 minutes. Yet another Ariane launch is scheduled for Dec 21, carrying the PAS 6B satellite. Russia launched a Nadehzda navigation/search and rescue satellite on an 11K65M Kosmos-3M rocket from Plesetsk on Dec 10 into a 987 x 1045 km x 83 degree orbit. Attached to Nadezdha was the small Swedish Space Corporation microsatellite Astrid-2. Astrid-2 was ejected at 1525 UTC. Astrid-2 will measure the auroral electromagnetic fields and particle environment. Mass is 30 kg. The Mars Climate Orbiter was launched on a Boeing Delta 7425 on Dec 11. MCO is the second craft in the Mars Surveyor Program; the first was Mars Global Surveyor, currently aerobraking in orbit around Mars. MCO was built by Lockheed Martin Astronautics/Denver and is a 338 kg craft (with a further 291 kg of fuel at launch) consisting of an equipment module and a 640N Leros bipropellant orbit insertion engine. MCO carries the MARCI color imager for mapping and weather studies, the PMIRR radiometer, and a UHF communications system which will relay data from Mars Polar Lander, scheduled for launch in January. MCO will enter a 160 x 38600 km polar orbit around Mars on 1999 Sep 23, and then use aerobraking to reach a 373 x 437 km x 92.9 deg sunsynchronous mapping orbit by 1999 Nov 23. The science mission will map the surface at high resolution, and study the distribution of water vapor and ozone. It also will study the transport of dust and water with latitude, the motions of weather systems and dust storms, and study the response to daily solar heating. MCO's Delta launch vehicle took off from Space Launch Complex 17 at Cape Canaveral and entered a 185 x 198 km x 28.4 deg parking orbit. A second Delta stage 2 burn raised apogee to around 900 km when the third stage took over for the solar orbit insertion burn. For the first time, a small solid Thiokol Star 37FM motor was used as the Delta third stage. An older Star 37E motor was used in the 1970s as the standard third stage, but was replaced by the much bigger Star 48 in the 1980s. The Star 37E and MCO are in solar orbit; the Delta stage 2 was left in a 162 x 857 km x 23.9 deg Earth orbit. Meanwhile, Deep Space 1 has completed a two week long burn of its NSTAR ion engine. The satellites I listed earlier as Iridium 2 and Iridium 3 are actually Iridium 87 and Iridium 78 respectively. The names used by Space Command are system identifiers which will be reused (i.e. there'll be another Iridium 3 someday replacing this one, so it's not a unique name) and not the spacecraft production numbers. I'll be posting a detailed constellation status in a forthcoming issue. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Nov 1 1703 Spartan 201 - Discovery, LEO Astronomy 64C Nov 4 0512 PAS 8 Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur Comsat 65A Nov 6 1337 Iridium 87) Delta 7920-10C Vandenberg SLC2W Comsat 66A Iridium 83) Comsat 66E Iridium 84) Comsat 66D Iridium 85) Comsat 66C Iridium 86) Comsat 66B Nov 10 1930? Spoutnik-41 - Mir, LEO Amateur 62C Nov 20 0640 Zarya Proton-K Baykonur LC81L Station 67A Nov 22 2354 BONUM-1 Delta 7925 Canaveral SLC17B Comsat 68A Dec 4 0835 Endeavour ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 69A Unity ) Station Dec 6 0043 Satmex 5 Ariane 42L Kourou ELA2 Comsat 70A Dec 6 0057 SWAS Pegasus XL Vandenberg Astronomy 71A Dec 10 1157 Nadezhda ) Kosmos-3M Plesetsk Navsat 72A Astrid-2 ) Science 72B Dec 11 1845 Mars Climate Orb. Delta 7425 Canaveral SLC17A Mars probe 73A Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-93 Mar 1999 OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 1 STS-96 May 1999 OV-104 Atlantis OPF Bay 2 STS-101 Aug 1999 OV-105 Endeavour LEO STS-88 MLP1/RSRM-69/ET-99 VAB Bay 1 STS-93 MLP2/ MLP3/ LC39A STS-88 .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS6 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@cfa.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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'