Jonathan's Space Report No. 454 2001 Jun 10, Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Station -------------------- Dr. Patricia Hilliard Robertson, a NASA astronaut in training, died in a Houston hospital early on May 25 (UTC) after a May 22 plane crash in Manvel, Texas. Dr. Robertson, 38, was a passenger in the small private plane. On Jun 8, Station astronauts Yuriy Usachyov and James Voss carried out depressurized work in the Zvezda transfer section, using Orlan-M spacesuits, while Susan Helms remained in the pressurized Zarya module (the Soyuz transfer ship is docked to Zarya). The Zvezda transfer airlock was depressurized at 1404 UTC and the astronauts went to battery power at 1419 UTC. Then the 1-meter diameter flat hatch cover was removed from the nadir docking port, opening the transfer compartment to vacuum at 1420 UTC (NASA TV reported this happened at 1421 UTC). The Zvezda docking cone, removed from the axial port after docking with Zarya last year, was then installed in the open hatch at around 1432 UTC and sealed in place at 1440 UTC, closing off the compartment again. The compartment was repressurized starting at 1458 UTC. Operation duration was 54 min (depress/repress), 20 min (hatch open/close, Russian rule), 0 min (egress/ingress - no actual external spacewalk was performed) or 39 min (usual NASA rule). Although NASA usually counts EVAs from `suits to battery power' until repress, this time they are using the Russian rule of hatch open to hatch close, cheating Jim Voss out of 19 min of EVA scorecard that he would normally be credited with. The STS-104 mission is facing delays due to problems with the Station's Canadarm-2 robot arm (SSRMS). The SSRMS's Arm Contoller Unit and its Shoulder Pitch Joint showed malfunctions in their backup systems. The Airlock (STS-104's main payload) can't be installed without the SSRMS, and although the arm can be used in its current state, there are concerns that there isn't enough redundancy in case of failure. There is a chance STS-104 might be slipped to later in the year, with a spacewalk on STS-105 being used to repair the arm. A working SSRMS is needed for all future Station assembly. The problems are likely to further slip this year's Shuttle schedule, which recently saw the next Hubble mission move to early 2002. Recent Launches --------------- Kosmos-2377 was launched on May 29 into a 165 x 358 km x 67.1 deg orbit, typical of the Yantar' class reconnaissance satellite. This generation of Yantar', possibly called Kobal't, carries a large recoverable capsule containing the camera system and film, as well as two small film capsules returned during the mission. The satellite will probably remain in space for around 120 days with a landing around Sep 26. Kosmos-2378 was launched on Jun 8 into a 963 x 1010 km x 82.9 deg orbit. It is probably a Parus class navigation satellite. The Kosmos-3M launch vehicle went up from Plesetsk and entered a roughly 150 x 1000 km transfer orbit; the second stage ignited again for a short 11s burn to put the Parus in its final orbit. This is the first Kosmos-3M flight since a failure in November 2000. Intelsat 901 was launched on Jun 9 by Arianespace. The first of the Intelsat 9 series, it will provide telecommunications services in the Atlantic Ocean Region for Intelsat. The intergovernmental International Telecommunications Satellite Organization, ITSO (INTELSAT), headquartered in Washington, D.C, is in the process of transferring its satellites to the privatized Intelsat LLC company. Intelsat 901 is an FS-1300HL, an improved version of the long-standing Space Systems/Loral (originally Aeronutronic Ford) FS-1300 platform. The satellite has C-band beams for the Atlantic region and a Ku-band spot beam for Europe, and (probably) an R-4D liquid apogee engine, and has a dry mass of 1972 kg and a launch mass of 4723 kg. It provides Intenet, video and telephone services. It will be stationed at 18W. The satellite was launched by an Ariane 44L from Kourou into geostationary transfer orbit, together with the H-10-3 cryogenic third stage rocket. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. May 8 2210 XM-1 Roll Zenit-3SL Odyssey, Pacific S-band radio 18A May 15 0111 PAS 10 Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur LC81/23 C/Ku video 19A May 18 1745 GeoLITE Delta 7925 Canaveral SLC17B Laser/UHF 20A May 20 2233 Progress M1-6 Soyuz-FG Baykonur LC1 Cargo 21A May 29 1755 Kosmos-2377 Soyuz-U Plesetsk LC43/4 Recon 22A Jun 8 1512 Kosmos-2378 Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC132 Navsat 23A Jun 9 0645 Intelsat 901 Ariane 44L Kourou ELA2 C/Ku telecom 24A Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia VAB Bay 4 STS-109 2002 Jan 17 HST SM-3B OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-105 2001 Aug 5? ISS 7A.1 OV-104 Atlantis VAB Bay 1 STS-104 2001 Jul 7? ISS 7A OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-108 2001 Nov 29 ISS UF-1 .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'