Jonathan's Space Report
No. 462 2001 Sep 26 Cambridge, MA
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Shuttle and Station
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The Expedition 3 crew continues work on the Station. The Progress M-SO1
vehicle is still docked to the Pirs airlock/docking module and will be
undocked and deorbited in late September.
Around the Solar System
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Deep Space 1 has completed its flyby of comet 19P/Borrelly. The
spacecraft flew past the nucleus at a distance of 2200 km at 2230 UTC on
2001 Sep 22 and appears to have survived the encounter in good shape,
sending back photos of the comet. Congratulations to Marc Rayman and the
DS1 team for a remarkable feat of interplanetary navigation. DS1 is in a
roughly 1.3 x 1.5 AU x 0 deg (ecliptic) orbit; Borrelly's orbit is 1.3 x
5.9 AU.
Recent Launches
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An Orbital Sciences Taurus 2110 failed to remain in orbit after launch
from Vandenberg's pad 576E on Sep 21. A problem a few seconds after
first stage separation caused the T6 rocket to go off course; the rocket
recovered and the remainder of the stages fired, but velocity appears to
have been just too low to reach a sustainable orbit.
Launch was at 1849 UTC on Sep 21; the Castor 120 first stage (or Stage
0 in Orbital's nomenclature) burn lasted about 83 seconds, and after its
separation the Orion 50S motor ignited - it was at this point that
things went awry. The Orion 50S separated at 1851 UTC and was followed
by the Orion 50 motor burn. The three Orion motors used in Taurus' upper
stages are the same motors used in the Pegasus rocket. At 1857 UTC the
Orion 38 final stage separated from the lower stages; at this stage it
was intended to burn from a -3000 x 465 km x 97 deg orbit to a circular
476 x 482 km x 97 deg orbit. A 150m/s velocity shortfall would be enough
to leave the payloads with a negative perigee.
At 1900 UTC the Orbview-4 satellite separated from the top of the Aft
Payload Capsule (APC). At 1902 UTC the APC top half separated; it had
been covering the QuikTOMS and SBD. At 1903 UTC the QuikTOMS separated
from the SBD satellite, which remained attached to the final stage.
At about 1902 UTC all these objects crossed the equator at an altitude
of around 427 km, heading south. I generated some test element sets and
find that to avoid crashing in Antarctica, perigee must have been more
than -50 km; if perigee was more than 80-90 km, the satellites would
probably have survived for a few orbits. Impact would have been between
1930 and 1945 UTC, in a region from the S Indian Ocean stretching up to
the sea east of Kenya, depending on the perigee, from 45-60E and between
60S and 10S. If the NASA statement that impact was NE of Madagascar
is correct, perigee must be toward the upper end of the range
and so I'm guessing an orbit of around 75-80 km x 425-430 km x 97 deg
was achieved.
The primary payload on T6 was the OrbView-4 imaging satellite.
OrbView-4, built by Orbital, was a 368 kg box-shaped satellite
carrying a 1-m resolution panchromatic camera and an 8-m
resolution 200-channel hyperspectral imager with a 0.45-meter aperture.
It was to be used by the US Air Force.
The second payload was the QuikTOMS satellite (and would it really have
been so hard to spell Quick correctly?), a NASA-GSFC project carrying
the TOMS-5 ozone mapper. QuikTOMS was a 168 kg double Microstar and
replaced TOMS instruments on a delayed Russian weather satellite and the
failed ADEOS. The loss of QuikTOMS may put a hole in NASA's attempts to
monitor the ozone layer.
The third payload was SBD, the Orbital Special Bus Design. The 73 kg
satellite was a test version of an enlarged Microstar bus. It
would have remained attached to the third stage, together with
two Celestis burial canisters containing cremated human remains,
and an experimental third stage avionics box.
All previous Taurus launches were successful; all launches have been
from pad 576E at Vandenberg. There are two main variants of Taurus flown
to date, one with the first stage of the Peacekeeper missile, and one
with its Castor 120 commercial equivalent.
Taurus Date Variant Stage 0 type Payload
T1 1994 Mar 13 1110 MX USAF STEP M0
T2 1998 Feb 20 2210 Castor 120 GFO/Orbcomm
T3 1998 Oct 3 1110 MX NRO STEX
T4 1999 Dec 21 2110 Castor 120 KOMPSAT/ACRIMSAT
T5 2000 Mar 12 1110 MX USAF/DoE MTI
T6 2001 Sep 21 2110 Castor 120 OV-4/QuikTOMS/SBD
The Lockheed Martin Athena-1, scheduled for launch from Kodiak Island,
also uses the Castor 120 first stage.
Arianespace launched an Ariane 44P from Kourou on Sep 25. Ariane V144
placed the Atlantic Bird 2 satelite in geostationary transfer orbit.
Atlantic Bird 2 is an Alcatel/Cannes Spacebus 3000B2 Ku-band
communications satellite owned by the European consortium Eutelsat. It
will replace the Telecom 2A satellite at 8 deg W and provide TV
broadcast, telecom and data services for Europe and for transatlantic
links. AB-2 has a dry mass of 1368 kg and a launch mass of 3150 kg.
AB-1, built by Alenia, has not yet been launched.
Table of Recent Launches
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Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Aug 6 0728 DSP 21 Titan 4B/IUS Canaveral SLC40 Early Warn 33A
Aug 8 1613 Genesis Delta 7326 Canaveral SLC17A Space probe 34A
Aug 10 2110 Discovery ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39 Spaceship 35A
Leonardo )
Aug 20 1830 Simplesat - Discovery, LEO Astronomy 35B
Aug 21 0924 Progress M-45 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 36A
Aug 24 2034 Kosmos-2379 Proton-K/DM2M? Baykonur LC81R Early Warn? 37A
Aug 29 0700 VEP-2 ) H-2A Tanegashima Technology 38B
LRE ) Geodesy 38A
Aug 30 0646 Intelsat 902 Ariane 44L Kourou ELA2 C/Ku telecom 39A
Sep 7 1939 Picosat 7/8 - Sindri, LEO Technology 00-42C
Sep 8 1525 USA 160 Atlas IIAS Vandenberg SLC3E Sigint 40A
Sep 14 2335 Pirs ) Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Station module
Progress M-SO1 ) Cargo 41A
Sep 21 1849 Orbview-4 ) Taurus 2110 Vandenberg 576E Imaging F01
QuikTOMS ) Environment F01
SBD ) Technology F01
Celestis-4 ) Burial F01
Sep 25 2321 Atlantic Bird 2 Ariane 44P Kourou ELA2 Ku telecom 42A
Current Shuttle Processing Status
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Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due
OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-109 2002 Jan 17 HST SM-3B
OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 Maintenance
OV-104 Atlantis VAB STS-110 2002 Feb 28 ISS 8A
OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-108 2001 Nov 29 ISS UF-1
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| 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 |
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