Jonathan's Space Report: 10th anniversary edition! No. 387 1999 Feb 1 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Editorial --------- The first issue of JSR was sent to an internal email distribution here at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics on 1989 Jan 30, ten years ago - I assumed only a few of my friends would be interested. The name was intended to emphasize the informal nature of my ramblings, in contrast to some of the more pompous and expensive newsletters out there. I was persuaded to distribute it more widely, and was surprised and astonished to see it grow to an audience of thousands - over 2800 on the direct email list as of today, and many more via the WWW and republication in other forms. Let me take this opportunity to express my thanks to all of you who have been kind enough to send me information, corrections and encouragement over the years. I hope you will continue to find JSR a useful source of information! Shuttle and Station ------------------------ We're still waiting to hear how long the delay to STS-93 will be. Engineers have examining the suspect circuit boards on the Chandra observatory. I understand they seem to be almost all fine; we will go ahead and fly Chandra to Kennedy Space Center on Feb 4 and make fixes at the Cape. Nevertheless, because the Space Station mission STS-96 wants to fly in May, we will not be able to launch until well after that. Stay tuned for an official announcement on a new launch date. The Mir space station remains in orbit with Gennady Padalka and Sergey Avdeev aboard. The first of several orbit-raising burns was made on Jan 27. The Progress M-40 cargo craft will undock on Feb 4 and deploy the 25-m diameter Znamya-2.5 reflector, which may be visible from as a flash brighter than the full Moon in various locations around the world (for example at around 0h UTC on Feb 5 in Southern Canada). The reflector, attached to the nose of Progress, will reflect a patch of sunlight about 6km wide on the surface. Znamya-2.5 is developed by the Space Regatta Consortium (SRC), led by the RKK Energiya company which operates Mir. Mir commander Padalka will use the TORU manual control system to point the reflector at the Earth. An earlier experiment, Znamya-2, was carried out in Feb 1993. Astronomers have expressed concern about the potential that experiments like Znamya may interfere with observations of the night sky. Although Znamya-2.5 itself isn't really a big deal, the fact that there is currently no international regulation controlling the launching of bright satellites which could destroy sensitive astronomical detectors (or, as some have suggested, replace the romantic night sky with orbiting billboards for Coke and Microsoft...) has led the International Astronomical Union to oppose the Znamya-2.5 experiment on the grounds of the precedent it would set. SRC's long term idea is that Znamya could lead to a constellation of huge space mirrors to illuminate Arctic cities, which raises a lot of environmental, political and practical concerns. Nevertheless, Znamya-2.5 is also an important test of the technology of deployable large structures and solar sails, with many useful potential applications, and presumably Energiya's main intention is that the publicity will generate Western contracts for further, less controversial, experiments with deployable structures which would use their expertise. Recent Launches --------------- Lockheed Martin's Athena-1 serial LM-6 launch vehicle took off from Spaceport Florida's pad at Cape Canaveral Air Station on Jan 27 and placed Taiwan's first satellite in orbit. ROCSAT (Republic of China Satellite) was built by TRW for Taiwan's National Space Program Office. The Castor 120 first stage and Orbus 21D second stage entered suborbital trajectories (the Orbus 21D probably just missed orbiting) and the Primex OAM third stage burned to enter transfer orbit. After a second OAM burn to circularize at apogee, ROCSAT separated into a 588 x 601 km x 35.0 deg orbit. ROCSAT carries a Ka-band experimental communications payload, an ocean color imager experiment to study plankton distribution for fisheries management, and an instrument to measure thermal plasma in the equatorial ionosphere. It also has a small hydrazine orbit adjust engine. Mass of the satellite is 400 kg. Athena launches to date: (LLV-1 and LMLV-1 were earlier names for Athena-1) Date Serial Type Site Payload 1995 Aug 15 DLV LLV-1 V SLC6 Gemstar (failed) 1997 Aug 23 LM-001 LMLV-1 V SLC6 Lewis 1998 Jan 7 LM-004 Athena-2 CC SLC46 Lunar Prospector 1999 Jan 27 LM-006 Athena-1 CC SLC46 Rocsat The Galileo probe made another flyby of Europa at 0210 UTC on Feb 1, at an altitude of 1495 km. Lunar Prospector lowered its orbit again on Jan 29, to only 25 x 35 km above the lunar surface. Mars Global Surveyor is completing its aerobraking, with orbit now 113 x 551 km x 93.1 deg around Mars. Erratum ------- The small PANSAT satellite launched on STS-88 was developed by the Naval Postgrad School at Monterey, not by the Naval Academy as implied in my annual launch list. 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 ) Jan 27 0034 ROCSAT-1 Athena-1 Canaveral SLC46 Science 02A Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-93 Unknown 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/ .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'