Jonathan's Space Report No. 390 1999 Mar 1 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note: I've updated the launch log files at hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/log Shuttle and Station ------------------------ Soyuz TM-29 was launched at 0418 UTC on Feb 20. The Soyuz-U (11A511U) launch vehicle placed spacecraft 7K-STM No. 78 (Soyuz TM-29) in orbit nine minutes later. Crew commander is Viktor Afanas'ev of the Russian Air Force, flight engineer is Jean-Pierre Haignere of the French space agency CNES, and researcher-cosmonaut is Ivan Bella of Slovakia. Soyuz TM-29 docked with Mir on Feb 22 at 0536 UTC. On Feb 27 EO-26 crew commander Gennady Padalka and Ivan Bella entered Soyuz TM-28 and undocked from the Kvant rear docking port at 2252 UTC, landing in Kazakstan at 0214 UTC on Feb 28. The new Mir crew, EO-27, is Viktor Afanas'ev (Komandir), Sergey Avdeev (who was formerly on the EO-26 crew), (Bortinzhener) and Jean-Pierre Haignere (Bortinzhener-2). The crew call sign is 'Derbent'. The next Shuttle mission is STS-96, to the Space Station. STS-101, scheduled for October, may be delayed if a new STS-103 Hubble servicing mission is added to repair HST's flaky gyros. Recent Launches --------------- The much-delayed USAF Space Test Program P91-1 satellite, ARGOS, finally got off the pad on Feb 23 on the 11th launch attempt. The Delta 7920 launch vehicle also placed two small subsatellites in orbit: Orsted for Denmark and Sunsat for Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Orbit is 831 x 847 km x 98.7 deg. ARGOS carries an electric propulsion experiment, ionospheric instruments, and a space dust experiment, as well as NRL's USA hard X-ray astronomy detectors for X-ray binary star timing observations. ARGOS was built by Boeing/Seal Beach (formerly Rockwell). Orsted will map the Earth's magnetic field, and is managed and operated by the Danmarks Meteorologiske Institut (Danish Meteorological Institute) in Kobenhavn. The satellite's prime contractor was CRI of Kobenhavn; mass is 62 kg. Sunsat was built by students at Stellenbosch and carries a small imager and a message relay payload. Arianespace completed its first 1999 launch with flight V116, delivering Arabsat 3A and Skynet 4E to orbit on an Ariane 44L. Arabsat 3A is a Spacebus 3000 built by Alcatel/Cannes for the Arab League. Launch mass is 2708 kg and dry mass is 1200 kg; the satellite has 20 Ku-band transponders and will be stationed at 26. It uses a DASA S400 liquid apogee engine. Skynet 4E is a SHF/UHF military comsat for the UK Ministry of Defense. It was built by Matra Marconi Space/Stevenage using the old ECS bus. Launch mass is 1490 kg and dry mass is 759 kg; Skynet 4E has a Thiokol Star 30 solid apogee motor. Russia launched a Krunichev Proton-K rocket from Baykonur on Feb 28, carrying the Globus No. 14 (Raduga-1) Russian Defense Ministry comsat to geostationary orbit. The Globus series is an improved version of the old Gran' (Raduga) satellite first launched in 1975; the satellites are build by NPO Prikladnoi Mekhaniki in Zheleznogorsk, near Krasnoyarsk. The upper stage, which made two burns to place the Raduga-1 in geosynchronous orbit, is probably an Energiya Blok DM-2 (11S861); the first test flight of Krunichev's Briz-M upper stage is due soon, but I don't think it was this flight. The WIRE infrared astronomy satellite is due for launch on Mar 1. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. 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 Feb 7 2104 Stardust Delta 7426 Canaveral SLC17A Probe 03A Feb 9 0354 Globalstar FM23 ) Soyuz-U/Ikar Baykonur Comsat 04B Globalstar FM36 ) Comsat 04A Globalstar FM38 ) Comsat 04C Globalstar FM40 ) Comsat 04D Feb 15 0512 Telstar 6 Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur LC81 Comsat 05A Feb 16 0145 JCSAT-6 Atlas 2AS Canaveral SLC36A Comsat 06A Feb 20 0418 Soyuz TM-29 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Spaceship 07A Feb 23 1030 ARGOS ) Delta 7920 Vandenberg SLC2W Technol. 08A Orsted ) Space Sci 08B Sunsat ) Technol. 08C Feb 26 2244 Arabsat 3A ) Ariane 44L Kourou ELA2 Comsat 09A Skynet 4E ) Comsat 09B Feb 28 0400? Raduga-1 Proton-K/DM-2? Baykonur Comsat 10A Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia VAB Bay 2 STS-93 Jul 9 OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 1 STS-96 May 20 OV-104 Atlantis OPF Bay 3 STS-101 Oct 14? OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 2 STS-99 Sep 18 MLP1/RSRM-69/ET-99 VAB Bay 1 STS-93 MLP2/RSRM-70 VAB Bay 3 STS-96 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'