Jonathan's Space Report No. 406 1999 Aug 23 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chandra --------------- The IPS-5 burn was carried out on Aug 7. We are now in our final orbit and the spacecraft is working well. In fact, a lot of the experts are heading back to the left coast and the flight controllers now seem pretty bored with the whole thing... thanks TRW for building us a nice bird. Here are some extracts from the latest press release: "Spontaneous cheers and applause erupted from managers and controllers clustered around consoles at NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory Operations Control Center in Cambridge, Mass., today [Aug 12] as data from the observatory confirmed that its sunshade door is open. " "Over the next week or two, the control team will do an initial calibration and early focusing of the telescope and take the first images with the observatory. NASA plans to unveil the first significant image and report on the observatory's early status at a news media briefing later this month. " "Today's activities culminated a busy week for the observatory control team during which they replaced pre-launch software aboard Chandra's computers with software that will be used during the operational part of the mission; opened the aft contamination cover which protected Chandra's sensitive mirrors from contamination prior-to and during launch; began characterizing the reflectivity of the mirrors (using special x-ray sources constructed by Marshall and mounted to the inside of the sunshade door); and continued activation and checkout of the telescope's two primary science instruments." NASA has announced that the first light images, including one of supernova remnant Cas A, will be released at a press conference on Thursday Aug 26. Shuttle and Mir --------------- The Mir spacewalk on Jul 23 started at 1106 UTC and lasted 6h 7min. The spacewalk on Jul 28 started at 0937 UTC and lasted 5h 22min. During the second spacewalk, Afanas'ev and Avdeev erected an experimental 6-meter antenna. At the end of the experiment the antenna was jettisoned. The next Shuttle mission is being delayed because of electrical wiring problems discovered on Columbia, which caused the short during the STS-93 launch. It's not clear yet whether the STS-99 radar mapper or the STS-103 Hubble repair will fly first. Recent Launches --------------- Arianespace is back in the launch business, with Indonesia's Telkom 1 placed in geostationary transfer orbit on Aug 12. Launches had been delayed because of problems with comsat manufacturing. The Ariane 42P launch vehicle delivered its LOX/LH2 H-10-3 third stage and the Telkom 1 payload to a 221 x 35687 km x 7.0 deg GTO 21 min after launch. Telkom 1 is an A2100 series satellite build by Lockheed Martin/Sunnyvale. The owner is PT Telkomunikasi of Indonesia. Telkom 1 is a successor to the Palapa series of satellites, the first of which was launched in 1976. Mass of Telkom 1 is 2763 kg launch, 1700 kg in GEO; dry mass not available. Four more Globalstar comsats were launched on Aug 17 by a Boeing Delta 2 rocket. The Russian Strategic Rocket Forces launched a Soyuz-U rocket from Plesetsk on Aug 18, placing a Yantar'-class spy satellite in orbit for the Russian Defense Ministry. The satellite is in a 166 x 342 km x 67.1 deg orbit, and is one of the low-perigee, high resolution series that followed on from the Kobal't satellites launched since 1981. Cassini flew past Earth at a distance of 1171 km at 0328 UTC Aug 18. Before the swingby, Cassini was in an orbit passing near Venus, with a perihelion of 0.7 AU, and stretching out the the middle of the asteroid belt at 2.6 AU. Picking up speed from the Earth encounter, the probe's perihelion has slightly increased to 0.86 AU but its aphelion is now 7.2 AU, between Jupiter and Saturn. US Air Force Space Command launched two Minuteman 3 missiles from Vandenberg to Kwajalein on Aug 20. The three stage missiles probably reached an apogee of 1500 km or so. Flight GT170-1GM was launched from silo LF-10 at 0845 UTC, and flight GT171GM was launched from LF-09 at 1127 UTC. These were the first Minuteman test flights since February. Space History ------------- For the record, the results on launch pad locations from my trip to KSC. These positions have low absolute accuracy (100m) but good relative accuracy. I've never been able to distinguish LC1 to LC4 on maps, so I wanted to establish more clearly where they were. LC1 80 32.23W 28 27.91N LC2 80 32.21W 28 27.93N LC3 80 32.17W 28 27.95N LC4 80 32.16W 28 27.99N LC5 80 34.42W 28 26.36N LC6 80 34.35W 28 26.42N LC26A 80 34.26W 28 26.67N LC26B 80 34.30W 28 26.62N I'd still like to get pads LC9/10/31/32 recorded, also not well located on maps. These positions are WGS-84 as realized by cheapo $100 GPS set. Pad 3 was the site of the first launch from Cape Canaveral almost 50 years ago. It was also the site of X-17 launches, used to develop Polaris technology. Pad 4 was used for Redstone launches from 1953 to 1955. Pads 1 and 2 were used for tests of the Snark cruise missile. Pads 5,6, 26A, 26B were used for launches of Redstone and Jupiter class rockets, including the Explorer satellites and the Mercury-Redstone. There's been some discussion about which pad is 5 and which is 6, so if anyone can confirm that LC5 is the southern one, further from the Space Museum, I'd appreciate it. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Jul 5 1332 Raduga Proton-K/BrizM Baykonur LC81P Comsat F02 Jul 8 0846 Molniya-3 Molniya-M Plesetsk Comsat 36A Jul 10 0845 Globalstar 32) Delta 7420-10 Canaveral SLC17B Comsat 37A Globalstar 30) Comsat 37B Globalstar 35) Comsat 37C Globalstar 51) Comsat 37D Jul 16 1636 Progress M-42 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 38A Jul 17 0638 Okean-O Zenit-2 Baykonur LC45 R/Sensing 39A Jul 23 0428 Columbia Shuttle Kennedy LC39B Spaceship 40A Jul 23 1147 Chandra IUS OV-102, LEO Astronomy 40B Jul 25 0746 Globalstar 26) Delta 7420 Canaveral SLC17A Comsat 41A Globalstar 28) Comsat 41B Globalstar 43) Comsat 41C Globalstar 48) Comsat 41D Aug 12 2252 Telkom 1 Ariane 42P CSG ELA2 Comsat 42A Aug 17 0437 Globalstar 24) Delta 7420 Canaveral SCL17 Comsat 43A Globalstar 27) Globalstar 53) Globalstar 54) Aug 18 1800 Kosmos-2365 Soyuz-U Plesetsk LC43/4 Recon 44A Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 OMDP OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 1 STS-103 Nov? OV-104 Atlantis VAB Bay 2 STS-101 Dec 2 OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 2 STS-99 Oct 7? MLP1/ MLP2/ MLP3/RSRM-71?/ET? VAB Bay 3 STS-99 .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'