Jonathan's Space Report No. 457 2001 Jul 25, Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Station -------------------- The STS-104 mission continued with spacewalks to stick gas tanks on the outside of the new Quest airlock, the first spacewalk from that airlock, and then undocking and landing. The Expedition 2 crew (Usachyov, Voss and Helms) remain on board Station until their replacements arrive next month on STS-105. The second STS-104 spacewalk was carried out on Jul 18. The airlock was depressurized at 0302 UTC and the hatch opened a minute later. Gernhardt and Reilly emerged at 0310 UTC and assisted in the installation of the oxygen and nitrogen tanks on the Quest module. O2 Tank 1, on the port side of the aft Spacelab pallet, was grappled by the Station's SSRMS arm at 0317 UTC and installed on Quest's nadir by 0421 UTC. N2 Tank 4, on the aft pallet's starboard side, was installed by 0639 UTC and O2 Tank 2 was moved from the port side of the forward pallet to Quest by 0845 UTC. Minor problems with valve configurations and recalcitrant connectors were soon overcome. The astronauts entered the airlock at 0921 UTC. The spacewalk lasted 6h31m (depress/repress), 6h24m (hatch open/close), or 6h29m (NASA rule). The same astronauts made the first spacewalk from the Quest module on Jul 21. The airlock depressurized slowly from 0329 UTC to 0434 UTC, when it reached 35 mbar and the airlock hatch was opened to vacuum. The N2 Tank 3 was transferred from the forward Spacelab pallet to the exterior of Quest, following which the astronauts climbed the P6 tower to inspect the solar arrays and the FPP experiment. The hatch was closed at 0832 UTC with repress at 0837 UTC for a duration of 4h03m (dp/rp), 3h58m (hatch open/close), or 4h02m (NASA rule). The STS-104 crew returned to Atlantis on Jul 22, and undocked at 0455 UTC. After flying around the station they departed the vicinity at 0615 UTC. Atlantis landed at 0338:55 UTC on Jul 25, touching down at Kennedy Space Center runway 15. Recent Launches --------------- The Russian Navy launched a three-stage R-29R Volna from a submarine, the Borisoglebsk, in the Barents Sea on Jul 20, on a suborbital flight. The payload was a joint project between the Planetary Society and NPO Lavochkin's Babakin center, and consisted of a solar sail deployment test with an inflatable reentry shield. The payload failed to separate from the final stage. The Russian Space Forces launched a TsSKB-Progress 8K78M Molniya-M rocket on Jul 20 from Plesetsk, placing a Molniya-1K military comsat in 12-hour elliptical orbit. The last launch of a Molniya-1T was in 1998; the new satellite is an improved model (Russian sources via Phil Clark; other sources are calling this a Molniya-3, and I am waiting for confirmation). The Molniya-M third stage reached a 214 x 420 km x 62.8 deg orbit at 0026 UTC. At around 0110 UTC, about half an orbit later over the SE Pacific, the NPO Lavochkin Blok-ML fourth stage fired to put the payload in a 407 x 40831 km x 62.9 deg orbit. The Molniya satellites are built by NPO-PM. International Launch Services launched a Lockheed Martin Atlas IIA from Cape Canaveral on Jul 23 carrying the GOES-M weather satellite. Flight AC-142 entered a 164 x 505 km parking orbit and then a supersynchronous transfer orbit of 274 x 42275 km x 20 deg. GOES-M is a Loral 1300-series satellite with a single solar array and a solar attitude control sail. Launch mass was 2279 kg and dry mass is 1042 kg. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites are developed by NASA-Goddard and transferred to the NOAA weather agency when operational. In addition to the usual weather imager/sounder, GOES-M carries a new solar soft X-ray imager. Earlier GOES satellites carried simple X-ray collimator detectors, but the new SXI is a full-fledged grazing incidence telescope similar to the SXT on Japan's Yohkoh satellite. The GOES-M satellite becomes GOES 12 now that it is on orbit. On Jul 22 the MAP probe was in a 4055 x 355935 km x 28.0 deg orbit, scheduled for a Jul 31 lunar flyby. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Jun 8 1508 Kosmos-2378 Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC132 Navsat 23A Jun 9 0645 Intelsat 901 Ariane 44L Kourou ELA2 C/Ku telecom 24A Jun 16 0149 Astra 2C Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur LC81/23 Ku video 25A Jun 19 0441 ICO-2 Atlas IIAS Canaveral SLC36B C/S phone/data 26A Jun 30 1946 MAP Delta 7425 Canaveral SLC17B Astronomy 27A Jul 12 0904 Atlantis STS-104) Shuttle Kennedy LC39B Spaceship 28A Quest ) Station module Jul 12 2158 Artemis ) Ariane 5G Kourou ELA3 Expt. comms 29A BSAT-2b ) Ku video 29B Jul 20 0017 Molniya-1K? Molniya-M Plesetsk LC43/4 Comms 30A Jul 23 0723 GOES 12 Atlas IIA Canaveral SLC36A Weather 31A Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-109 2002 Jan 17 HST SM-3B OV-103 Discovery LC39A STS-105 2001 Aug 5 ISS 7A.1 OV-104 Atlantis KSC RW15 STS-110 2002 Feb 28 ISS 8A 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'