Jonathan's Space Report No. 447 2001 Feb 19 Mt Hopkins, Arizona ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Stations -------------------- Atlantis docked to ISS Alpha on Feb 9. At 1500 UTC on Feb 10 Marsha Ivins used the RMS arm to unberth the PMA-2 docking port from Unity. Tom Jones and Bob Curbeam have begun the first spacewalk from the ODS airlock on Atlantis, supervising the assembly operations. The airlock was depressurized at 1544 UTC; the hatch was opened at 1546 UTC and the astronauts went to suit battery power at 1550 UTC. PMA-2 was berthed on Z1 at 1650 UTC; Destiny was unberthed from the payload bay at 1735 UTC and docked to Unity at 1900 UTC. At 1935 UTC Curbeam was connecting ammonia coolant lines when a leaking connector sprayed ammonia into space, contaminating his suit. He was ordered to stay in sunlight to bake off the ammonia. At around 2311 UTC the spacewalkers returned to the airlock, closing the hatch at 2318 UTC. Repressurization began at 2324 UTC, for a duration of 7h40m (depress), 7h34m (NASA), or 7h32m (hatch open/close). The airlock reached 5psi (34 kPa) at 2326 UTC and was held there, with the astronauts still in suits. A new depressurization for decontamination was begun at 2342 UTC, with the airlock fully depressurized at 2350 UTC. The hatch was then opened and closed quickly at 2351-2352 UTC, to flush the airlock of any ammonia residue, and repressurization began anew at 2353 UTC, reaching 5psi again prior to 2357 UTC. This new spacewalk lasted 3 minutes (depress), or 1 minute (hatch open/close); it was not counted as an EVA by NASA. EVA-2 began at 1555 UTC on Feb 12 with depressurization of the airlock. The astronauts went to battery power at 1559 UTC. The PMA-2 docking port was attached to Destiny at 1728 UTC. The Power Data Grapple Fixture (PDGF) was removed from its location on an adaptive payload carrier on the port side of the payload bay (probably bay 5P) and installed on Destiny. The PDGF will be used by the Station's robot arm, and is an improved grapple fixture with electrical power and data ports. The hatch was closed at 2240 UTC and the airlock was repressurized at 2249 UTC. Duration was 6h54m (depress), about 6h50m (hatch open/close), or 6h50m (NASA rule). The third official EVA was on Feb 14. The airlock was depressurized at 1443 UTC, with hatch open at around 1445 and battery power at 1448. The spare SASA S-band antenna was unberthed from an adapter beam in the payload bay (around bay 4P?) and installed on Z1. The +X (starboard) TCS radiator on P6, launched on the previous mission, was deployed at 1649 UTC. The astronauts completed the spacewalk with repressurization of the airlock at 2013 UTC. Time was 5h30m (depress), about 5h24m (hatch open/close), or 5h25m (NASA). Atlantis undocked from Alpha at 1406 UTC on Feb 16. Landing was waved off on Feb 18 and is expected on Feb 19. Destiny has been cataloged by US Space Command as 2001-06B (SSN 26700). Unity was also given a catalog number, but for some reason Z1 and P6 were not. At the end of the docked phase, Atlantis mass is 95242 kg and the Station mass is 104401 kg for a total mass of 199643 kg. Discovery was rolled out to pad LC39B on Feb 12 in preparation for the next flight, STS-102. On Feb 12, the Mir complex was in a 272 x 293 km orbit. Reentry is expected in mid-March. NEAR-Shoemaker at Eros ---------------------- The NEAR-Shoemaker probe has completed its descent to the surface of minor planet (433) Eros. The deorbit burn, at an altitude of 26 km above the surface, was at 1515 UTC into a 7.5 km x 35 km orbit relative to Eros center, with periapsis below the surface. Touchdown was at 1944:35 UTC at location 35S 279W. Signals continued to be received from NEAR hours after the landing, confirming that it survived the 2m/s impact. Readers should note that APL has been reporting times of radio signal receipt as if they were the actual times that the events occurred, and most media reports, even Spaceflightnow.com and the New York Times, have propagated this error. Light travel time from Eros at the time of landing was 17 minutes 35 seconds, so the touchdown signal was received on Earth at 2002:10 UTC, and this has been incorrectly reported as the actual landing time. NEAR-Shoemaker was built and operated by Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Lab (APL). It was the first launch in NASA's Discovery Program, on 1996 Feb 17 by a Delta 7925 from Cape Canaveral. After a 13-minute stay in a 185 km parking orbit around the Earth, NEAR was boosted to a 0.99 x 2.18 AU x 0.8 deg orbit around the Sun. Following a 1200 km flyby of (253) Mathilde on 1997 Jun 27, a burn on 1997 Jul 3 put NEAR in a 0.95 x 2.18 AU x 0.5 deg orbit on track for an Earth flyby 532 km over Iran on 1998 Jan 23. This lowered the orbit to 0.99 x 1.77 AU and increased ecliptic inclination to 10 degrees. NEAR flew past (433) Eros on 1998 Dec 23, after an aborted rendezvous burn. A new burn put NEAR in a 1.13 x 1.78AU orbit and set it up for a second Eros approach on 2000 Feb 14, with insertion into a 321 x 366 km polar orbit, soon reduced to 100 x 100 km and later to 35 km. Later in 2000 the orbital inclination around Eros was increased to 130 deg, and finally in Dec 2000 to 179 deg. NEAR spent one year in Eros orbit prior to this week's final descent. Below I list the Discovery program missions. NASA Discovery program ---------------------- Launch Completion Operator Mission 1 NEAR 1996 Feb 17 2001 Feb 14? APL Eros orbit and landing 2 Mars Pathfinder 1996 Dec 4 1997 Oct 7 JPL Mars landing 3 Lunar Prospector 1998 Jan 7 1999 Jul 31 NASA-ARC Lunar orbit, impact 4 Stardust 1999 Feb 7 2006 (plan) JPL Wild-2 flyby, sample return 5 Genesis 2001 (plan) 2004 (plan) CalTech L1 sample collection 6 Contour 2002 (plan) 2008? APL Multiple comet flybys 7 Deep Impact 2004 (plan) 2005 (plan) JPL P/Tempel-1 impact 8 Messenger 2004 (plan) APL Mercury orbiter Errata ------- Skynet 4F belongs to the UK Ministry of Defence, not the (non-existent) Ministry of Defense. SICRAL actually stands for Satellite Italiano per Comunicazioni Riservate e ALlarmi (Italian Satellite for Restricted Communications and Warnings) and its manufacturer is now called Alenia Spazio. Apparently FiatAvio makes the biprop engine, I haven't found any details on it yet. Dry mass for the Telecom 1 satellites was actually more like 560 kg. Thanks to J-P. Donnio for the correction. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Jan 9 1700 Shenzhou 2 Chang Zheng 2F Jiuquan Spaceship 01A Jan 10 2209 Turksat 2A Ariane 44P Kourou ELA2 Commsat 02A Jan 24 0428 Progress M1-5 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 03A Jan 30 0755 Navstar GPS 54 Delta 7925 Canaveral SLC17A Navsat 04A Feb 7 2306 Sicral ) Ariane 44L Kourou ELA2 Commsat 05A Skynet 4F ) Commsat 05B Feb 7 2313 Atlantis (STS-98))Space Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 06A Destiny ) Module 06B Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia Palmdale OMDP OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 1 STS-102 2001 Mar 8 ISS 5A.1 OV-104 Atlantis LEO STS-98 2001 Feb 7 ISS 5A OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 2 STS-100 2001 Apr 19 ISS 6A .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'