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
-----------------------

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
---------------

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
_________________________________
 
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    |                                    |
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