Jonathan's Space Report No. 396 1999 Apr 29 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Human spaceflight ------------------- The next Shuttle launch, STS-96, is scheduled for May 20. Discovery and the STS-96 stack have been rolled out to pad 39B. No news yet on how long the delay to STS-93 will be because of the IUS-21 failure. Viktor Afanas'ev and Jean-Pierre Haignere remain on board the Mir complex. Orbit raising burns are underway with the Progress M-41 cargo ship's engine. Space Command have corrected the designation of Sputnik-99 to 1999-15C. Recent Launches --------------- * UoSAT-12 Surrey's UoSAT-12 satellite is undergoing orbital checkout. I have confirmed that the SNAP-1 nanosatellite was not aboard the UoSAT-12 launch. The two objects in circular orbit are UoSAT-12 and part of the Dnepr payload shroud; the object initially cataloged as 1999-22B/SNAP-1 (now 1999-21B) is actually UoSAT-12. The object in eccentric orbit, 1999-21C, is the Dnepr third stage. Although the R-36M2 is considered a two-stage vehicle, it in fact has a third stage maneuvring bus for dispensing multiple warheads (similar to the post-boost vehicle on Minuteman 3), and it is this bus which performed orbit insertion. The two main R-36M2 stages were suborbital. The Dnepr was launched at 0459:03 UTC and the third stage separated from the payload at 0513 UTC on Apr 21. * Ikonos-1 The Athena rocket has suffered its second launch failure. Ikonos-1 was launched at 1822 UTC on Apr 27 on a Lockheed Martin Athena-2, serial LM-005, from Vandenberg AFB. The Athena-2 uses the old MOL/Shuttle pad at SLC-6, and is launched from one of the SRB mount points. Athena-2 has four stages: two Thiokol Castor 120s, one UTC Orbus 21, and one Lockheed Martin/Primex OAM (Orbit Adjust Module). The OAM performs transfer orbit insertion and an apogee burn. The flight was apparently successful through Orbus 21 burn and the beginning of the first OAM burn, but tracking stations downrange did not pick up the spacecraft. It was later determined from telemetry that the rocket nose fairing failed to separate 4 minutes after launch, and the extra mass caused the vehicle to reenter on the first partial orbit. The planned orbit after the first OAM burn was 220 x 689 km x 98.1 deg; the second OAM burn would have placed Ikonos in a 680 x 690 km x 98.1 deg circular orbit. Instead, the vehicle reentered over the South Pacific well before the planned second burn. 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 1999 Apr 27 LM-005 Athena-2 V SLC6 Ikonos 1 (failed) Space Imaging's Ikonos 1 used an LM-900 bus built by Lockheed Martin/Sunnyvale. It carried a 1-m resolution panchromatic camera, the first commercial imaging satellite with this high a resolution. A 4-m resolution color imager was also aboard. * ABRIXAS A Kosmos-3M (11K65M) rocket was launched successfully on Apr 28, the first orbital launch since 1988 from GTsP-4 (State Test Range 4) at Kapustin Yar. The Kosmos-3M is built by Polyot of Omsk and marketed by OHB-System (Bremen)'s Cosmos International. The Kosmos-3M (11K65M) launch vehicle consists of a first stage derived from Yangel's R-14 (8K65) intermediate range missile, designated SS-5 by NATO. The upper stage, developed in the early 1960s, has a restartable engine. First launch of the 65S3 satellite launch vehicle was in August 1964; the modified 11K65M version flew in 1967, and Polyot took over production in 1970. Kosmos-3M usually flies from Plesetsk (GIK-1), with occasional launches from GTsP-4 since 1973. I understand there used to be two launch pads at area LC107, LC107/1 and LC107/2 - I don't know which was used for this launch. GTsP-4 was first used for satellite launches in October 1961, with the first attempted launch of a small Kosmos satellite on the 63S1 (later 11K63) rocket derived from the smaller R-12 (SS-4) missile from the Mayak-2 silo. In late 1964 launches switched to the LC86 complex's pads 1 and 4. 11K63 orbital launches from LC86 stopped in 1973 shortly after 11K65M launches from LC107 began. Payload of the Kosmos-3M on this launch was the DLR (German space agency) ABRIXAS satellite, built by OHB-System. Mass of ABRIXAS is 470 kg. MPE/Garching and the Astrophysical Institute in Potsdam developed the scientific payload, a set of seven hard X-ray imaging telescopes with an X-ray CCD detector which will carry out an all-sky survey in the 1-10 keV band with 30 arcsecond resolution. The last all-sky survey in this band was carried out in the 1970s by HEAO-1, which had no optics and therefore very poor spatial resolution. The new mission will complement MPE's existing all sky survey with the ROSAT satellite, carried out in the 0.1-2 keV soft band. It'll be interesting to see what kinds of objects turn up at the harder energies; it's possible that there are whole classes of sources which are obscured at ROSAT energies (the galaxy is much more transparent in the ABRIXAS band). Congratulations to Gunter Hasinger and his team and best wishes for a very successful survey. ABRIXAS separated from the Kosmos-3M second stage one hour after launch into a 544 x 603 km x 48.4 deg orbit. The 48.4 deg inclination was familiar to Soviet space watchers in the early 1960s, used by Kosmos satellites on 63S1 rockets from Kapustin Yar, but this is the first time it's been used since 1973. A secondary payload on the same launch was Megsat-0, a small technology development satellite built and owned by MegSat, the space division of the Gruppo Meggiorin companies based in Brescia (Italy). The 0.4-meter box has a mass of 35 kg. It carries an experimental high bit rate data transmission payload. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Mar 5 0256 WIRE Pegasus XL Vandenberg Astronomy 11A Mar 15 0306 Globalstar M022 ) Soyuz-U/Ikar Baykonur LC1 Comsat 12A Globalstar M041 ) Comsat 12B Globalstar M046 ) Comsat 12C Globalstar M037 ) Comsat 12D Mar 21 0009 Asiasat 3S Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur LC81L Comsat 13A Mar 28 0130 DemoSat Zenit-3SL Odyssey, POR Test 14A Apr 2 1128 Progress M-41 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 15A Apr 2 2203 Insat 2E Ariane 42P Kourou ELA2 Comsat 16A Apr 9 1701 DSP F19 Titan 4/IUS Canaveral LC41 Early Warn 17A Apr 12 2250 Eutelsat W3 Atlas 2AS Canaveral LC36A Comsat 18A Apr 15 0046 Globalstar M019 ) Soyuz-U/Ikar Baykonur LC1 Comsat 19A Globalstar M042 ) 19B Globalstar M044 ) 19C Globalstar M045 ) 19D Apr 15 1832 Landsat 7 Delta 7920-10 Vandenberg SLC2W Imaging 20A Apr 16 1030? Sputnik-99 - Mir, LEO Comsat 15C Apr 21 0459 UoSAT-12 Dnepr Baykonur LC108 Test 21B Apr 27 1822 Ikonos 1 Athena 2 Vandenberg SLC6 Imaging F01 Apr 28 2030 ABRIXAS ) Kosmos-3M Kap. Yar LC107? Astronomy 22A Megsat-0 ) Technol. 22B Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 1 STS-93 Unknown OV-103 Discovery LC39B 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/ET-100/OV-103 LC39B 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'