Jonathan's Space Report No. 422 2000 Mar 28 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Stations -------------------- The next Shuttle mission is STS-101, to the international space station. Crew are James Halsell, Scott Horowitz, Mary Ellen Weber, Jeffrey Williams, James Voss, Susan Helms, and Yuriy Usachev. Atlantis will carry the External Airlock/Orbiter Docking System, the Spacehab Long Tunnel, the Keel Yoke Device with the Integrated Cargo Carrier (ICC) pallet, and the Spacehab Logistics Double Module. A GAS canister in bay 13 port contains the SEM-6 and MARS high school experiments. The ICC carries parts of the ISS Strela robot arm and a Shuttle GPS navigation experiment. The launch of Soyuz TM-30 with the EO-28 Mir crew is scheduled for Apr 4. Commander is Sergey V. Zalyotin; flight engineer is Aleksandr Kaleri. Recent Launches --------------- The Multispectral Thermal Imager (MTI), USAF Space Test Program mission P97-3, was launched by Orbital Sciences Taurus on Mar 12. MTI is a Sandia Labs mission to test out a multispectral imager for treaty monitoring applications. The mission used a Taurus 1110 rocket with a 63-inch fairing and a Peacekeeper first stage. The satellite is in a 577 x 613 km x 97.4 deg orbit. The first ICO Global Communications satellite was lost when its Zenit-3SL launch vehicle failed on Mar 12. ICO F-1 was a 2750 kg Hughes HS-601M satellite and would have entered a 10300 km x 45 deg circular orbit. ICO's satellites carry multiple spot beams for mobile communications. The Zenit-3SL vehicle took of from Boeing Sea Launch's Odyssey platform in the Pacific at 154W 0N. The Zenit second stage shut down prematurely due to a valve commanding mistake in the prelaunch sequence, and the satellite fell in the South Pacific, possibly south of Pitcairn. The fact that the error has been discovered quickly and seems to be a simple software mistake means the downtime for Sea Launch may be relatively short. The second Ekspress A Russian communications satellite was successfully launched on Mar 12 by a Krunichev Proton-K from Baykonur. Ekspress A No. 2 will be assigned to the Ekspress 6A slot at 80E, providing communications for GO Kosmicheskaya Svyaz. The first Ekspress A was lost in a launch failure last year. The Ekspress A is built by NPO PM, with a communications payload from Alcatel. The Proton-K used an Energiya Blok DM-2M upper stage. USAF Space Command launched a Peacekeeper missile from silo LF-05 at Vandenberg at 0940 UTC on Mar 8. Operational test mission GT29PA was scheduled to carry 8 reentry vehicles to the Kwajalein Atoll target area. These suborbital flights reach apogees of around 1000 km. The Peacekeeper's first stage is similar to the first stage of the Taurus and Athena space launch vehicles. The second test launch of the Soyuz-Fregat launch vehicle succeeded on Mar 20. The Fregat upper stage placed a dummy satellite, Dumsat, into orbit. Dumsat, built by Aerospatiale Matra, is a mass model of a pair of Cluster II scientific satellites. Dumsat remained attached to the Fregat stage, in a 244 x 18016 km x 64.6 deg orbit. The Soyuz third stage flew a suborbital trajectory. The first fully commercial Ariane 5 flight successfully placed two comsats, Asiastar and Insat 3B, in geostationary transfer orbit on Mar 21. Worldspace's second digital radio satellite is Asiastar, a Matra Marconi Space Eurostar 2000+ satellite with a dry mass of 1220 kg. Asiastar joins Afristar in orbit with a mission of providing radio broadcasting to and by communities in the developing world. Insat 3B was accelerated to replace the lost Insat 2D and carries a pure telecom payload of C, Ku and S band transponders, unlike earlier Insats which also had weather instruments. The satellite was built by ISRO, the Indian Space Research Organization, and has a dry mass of 970 kg. Ariane 5's EPS upper stage was left in a 699 x 35445 km x 7.0 deg orbit. The EPC core stage reentered over the Galapagos Islands after completing most of one orbit. NASA's IMAGE satellite was launched on Mar 25. IMAGE, the Imager for Magnetopause to Aurora Global Exploration, is a MIDEX (mid-sized Explorer mission) and was developed by NASA-Goddard and the SWRI (Southwest Research Institute of San Antonio, Texas). The spin-stabilized spacecraft is a Lockheed Martin LM100. It carries a set of neutral atom imagers and ultraviolet imagers, and antennae to study radio wavelength emissions from the magnetospheric plasma. The RPI radio plasma imager has four long wire antennae which will be deployed to a span of half a kilometer. IMAGE was launched by a Boeing Delta 7326 from Space Launch Complex 2-West at Vandenberg AFB. The 7326 uses three strapon GEM-40 boosters, a long tank Delta II Thor first stage, a Delta II second stage with an Aerojet AJ-10-118K engine, and a Thiokol Star 37FM third stage solid motor. The Delta second stage made a single burn to a 185 x 1076 km x 93.9 deg orbit and separated from the Star 37 whose burn left IMAGE in a 987 x 45993 km x 89.9 deg final orbit. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Feb 1 0647 Progress M1-1 Soyuz Baykonur LC1 Cargo 05A Feb 3 0926 Kosmos-2369 Zenit-2 Baykonur LC45 Sigint 06A Feb 3 2330 Hispasat 1C Atlas IIAS Canaveral SLC36B Comsat 07A Feb 7 0334 MEMS 1 ) - OPAL, LEO Tech. 04H MEMS 2 ) Tech. 04H Feb 8 2124 Globalstar 60) Delta 7420 Canaveral SLC17B Comsat 08A Globalstar 62) Comsat 08B Globalstar 63) Comsat 08C Globalstar 64) Comsat 08D Feb 8 2320 IRDT ) Soyuz/Fregat Baykonur LC31 Tech 09 Dummy satellite) Tech 09A Fregat ) Tech 09B Feb 10 0130 ASTRO E M-V Kagoshima Mu Astron. F01 Feb 11 0510 JAK OPAL, LEO Comsat 04L Feb 11 0510 STENSAT OPAL, LEO Comsat 04M Feb 11 1743 Endeavour ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 10A SRL-3 ) Feb 12 0910 Garuda 1 Proton/DM3 Baykonur LC81L Comsat 11A Feb 12 1343 Thelma ) OPAL, LEO Science 04J Louise ) Science 04K Feb 18 0104 Superbird 4 Ariane 44LP Kourou ELA2 Comsat 12A Mar 12 0407 Ekspress A2 Proton Baykonur Comsat 13A Mar 12 0929 MTI Taurus Vandenberg 576E Imaging 14A Mar 12 1449 ICO F-1 Zenit-3SL Sea Launch Comsat F02 Mar 20 1828 Dumsat Soyuz/Fregat Baykonur LC31 Tech 15A Mar 21 2328 Asiastar ) Ariane 5 Kourou ELA3 Comsat 16A Insat 3B ) Comsat 16B Mar 25 2034 IMAGE Delta 7326 Vandenberg SLC2W Science 17A Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia Palmdale OMDP OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 1 STS-92 2000 Sep? ISS 3A OV-104 Atlantis LC39A STS-101 2000 Apr 18? ISS 2A.2a OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 2 STS-97 2000 Nov? ISS 4A .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'