Jonathan's Space Report No. 426 2000 May 21, Bonn ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Stations -------------------- Space Shuttle OV-104 Atlantis was launched at 1011:10 UTC on May 19, starting mission STS-101. This was the first launch with the new electronic cockpit displays and other upgrades, and it seems to have gone almost flawlessly. The solid boosters separated at 1013 UTC and the main engines cutoff at 1019 UTC. The external tank, ET-102 then separated, with both orbiter and ET-102 in a low perigee orbit. The NASA PAO claimed it had reached an orbit with a 320 km perigee, but this was clearly an error - probably the planned post OMS-2 orbit. I'm trying to find out the actual transfer orbit but the PAO folks don't seem to know it; it was probably around 52 x 320 km. One disadvantage of the increased computerization: in the old days you could hear the capcom read up the maneuver pads with the engine firing data, and the astronauts repeat it back. Now they just say "use the stuff we loaded into your computer" and the rest of us never get to see the numbers... At 1054 UTC the OMS engines fired to raise perigee to 159 x 329 km x 51.6 deg. Atlantis docked with the International Space Station at 0431 UTC on May 21. Current Launches ---------------- The Rokot launch vehicle was flown from Plesetsk on May 16. The two-stage modified UR-100NUTTKh ICBM, developed by Krunichev, delivered a Briz-KM upper stage to a suborbital trajectory. The first Briz burn was to an approximately 200 x 550 km transfer orbit; the second burn circularized at apogee. It placed two 660 kg dummy satellites in orbits similar to the parking orbit that was used for the defunct Iridium program. Simsat-1 is in a 543 x 558 km x 86.3 deg orbit; Simsat-2 is in a 520 x 544 km x 86.4 deg orbit. The Briz-KM stage made a third burn to lower its perigee to a 178 x 556 km x 86.4 deg disposal orbit. Rokot (`roar' or `rumble') is called Rockot by its Western marketers, EUROCKOT Launch Services GmbH, a joint venture between Krunichev and DaimlerChrysler Aerospace. This was its first flight from Plesetsk, using a launch pad originally used for Kosmos rockets. Last week I identified the Kosmos-2370 Neman-class satellite launched May 3 as a Yantar'-4KS2 design. In fact, this designation is speculative; Phil Clark proposed it as the most probable identification. It would be more correct to say that the 17F117 Neman is based on the Yantar' bus and is a descendant of the Yantar'-4KS1 design. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Apr 4 0501 Soyuz TM-30 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Spaceship 18A Apr 17 2106 Sesat Proton Baykonur LC200L Comsat 19A Apr 19 0029 Galaxy IVR Ariane 42L Kourou ELA2 Comsat 20A Apr 25 2008 Progress M1-2 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 21A May 3 0707 GOES 11 Atlas 2A Canaveral SLC36A Weather 22A May 3 1325 Kosmos-2370 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Imaging 23A May 8 1601 DSP 20 Titan 4B Canaveral LC40 Early Warn 24A May 11 0148 GPS SVN 51 Delta 7925 Canaveral SLC17A Navsat 25A May 16 0828 Simsat-1 ) Rokot Plesetsk LC133 Test 26A Simsat-2 ) 26B May 19 1011 Atlantis Space Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 27A 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 LEO STS-101 2000 May 19 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'