Jonathan's Space Report: 10th anniversary year
No. 385 draft                                     1999 Jan 13 Cambridge, MA
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Shuttle and Station
------------------------

The next Shuttle launch is STS-93, which will deploy the Chandra X-ray
Observatory. Columbia will be transferred to the Vehicle Assembly
Building in early February; Chandra flies from TRW's Redondo Beach plant
in California to Florida at the end of the month.

Recent Launches
---------------

A Krunichev Proton-K launch vehicle with an Energiya 11S861 DM-2 upper
stage placed three Uragan navigation satellites in orbit for the Russian
Ministry of Defence GLONASS system on Dec 30. The GLONASS satellites
operate in  19000 km circular orbits and are analogous to the US Navstar
GPS system; the Uragan spacecraft were designed by NPO PM of
Zheleznogorsk and built by Polyot of Omsk. The three satellites  are
Uragan Nos. 86, 84 and 79 (GLONASS numbers 786, 784 and 779), and are in
orbital plane 1, according to the KNITs web page.

NASA's Mars Polar Lander was launched on Jan 3 at 2021 UTC by a Boeing
Delta 7425 rocket. The first burn of the second stage placed it in a 157
x 245 km x 28.35 deg parking orbit. The second stage started again
around 2055 UTC and was follwed by the burn of the Star 48B third stage.
The third stage and MPL entered solar orbit, with third stage separation
at around 2102 UTC. The second stage was left in a 226 x 740 km x 25.8 deg
Earth orbit.

MPL is part of the Mars Surveyor program. It consists of a cruise stage
and a lander, built by Lockheed Martin Astronautics/Denver. Attached to
the cruise stage are two Deep Space 2 Mars Microprobes, penetrator
probes which will slam into the Martian surface a few hundred km away
from the MPL landing site. DS2 is part of NASA's New Millenium Program.
Both MPL and DS2 are managed by the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena.

The LP team tell me that the report of a drift in Lunar Prospector's
inclination to 85 deg was a typo, and the actual orbit inclination
remains close to 90.0 degrees. 

Following its propulsion problems, ISAS' Nozomi probe will remain in
solar orbit until Dec 2003, entering Mars orbit four years late.


Launch Logs
-----------

I've updated the various launch logs in 
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/log/

Several new launch times for early (1958-1962) Soviet satellites have
been added from recent Russian publications. Also, the Kosmos-2285
satellite launched in Aug 1994, which I flagged as an unusual mission in
JSR 206, is implicitly identified in a recent Russian book as Obzor No.
1, an experimental remote sensing satellite.

Table of Recent Launches
-----------------------
Date UT       Name            Launch Vehicle  Site            Mission    INTL.
                                                                          DES.

Dec  4 0835   Endeavour  )      Shuttle        Kennedy LC39A    Spaceship  69A
              Unity      )                                      Station    69F
              PMA-1      )
              PMA-2      )
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
Dec 14 0431   SAC-A                            Endeavour,LEO    Science    69B
Dec 15 0209   Mightysat                        Endeavour,LEO    Technol.   69C
Dec 19 1130   Iridium 88?)      CZ-2C/SD       Taiyuan          Comsat     74A
              Iridium 89?)                                      Comsat     74B
Dec 22 0108   PAS 6B            Ariane 42L     Kourou ELA2      Comsat     75A
Dec 24 2003   Kosmos-2361       Kosmos-3M      Plesetsk         Navsat     76A
Dec 30 1835   Kosmos-2362  )    Proton-K/DM2   Baykonur         Navsat     77A
              Kosmos-2363  )                                    Navsat     77B
              Kosmos-2364  )                                    Navsat     77C
Jan  3 2021   Mars Polar Lander) Delta 7425    Canaveral SLC17B Mars probe 01A
              MPL Cruise Stage )
              DS2 Microprobe 1 )
              DS2 Microprobe 2 )


Current Shuttle Processing Status
_________________________________

Orbiters               Location   Mission    Launch Due

OV-102 Columbia        OPF Bay 3     STS-93  Apr 1999
OV-103 Discovery       OPF Bay 1     STS-96  May 1999
OV-104 Atlantis        VAB Bay 2     STS-101 Aug 1999
OV-105 Endeavour       OPF Bay 2     STS-99  Sep 1999

MLP1/RSRM-69/ET-99             VAB Bay 1 STS-93
MLP2/
MLP3/                          

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|  Jonathan McDowell                 |  phone : (617) 495-7176            |
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