Jonathan's Space Report No. 482 2002 Jun 25, Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Station -------------------- The STS-111 (Station Utilization Flight-2) mission is now complete, and Expedition 5 crew members Valeriy Korzun, Peggy Whitson and Sergei Treshchev remain aboard the Station. Some details on STS-111 in this issue are repeated from JSR 481, with updated values. (I was on travel during part of the mission, and details here are based on press reports, coverage by www.spaceflightnow.com, and information kindly provided by Eddie Lyons.) Endeavour docked with the Station at 1625 UTC on Jun 7. The Leonardo MPLM module was attached to the Station on June 8.On Jun 9, Chang-Diaz and Perrin made a spacewalk from the Quest airlock. It was depressurized at around 1522 UTC and the hatch was opened at 1524 UTC. The suits went to battery power at 1527 UTC. The astronauts installed the PGDF grapple fixture on the P6 truss, stowed some space debris shields on the PMA-1 adapter, and prepared the Mobile Base System (MBS) in the Shuttle cargo bay. The hatch was closed at 2234 UTC and the airlock began repressurization at 2242 UTC. MBS was unberthed sometime around 2220 UTC and docked to the Mobile Transporter at 1304 UTC on Jun 10. On Jun 11 at about 1515 UTC the Quest was depressurized again, with Chang-Diaz and Perrin opening the hatch around the same time and going to battery power at 1520 UTC. During this spacewalk the astronauts completed setting up the MBS system. The hatch was closed at 2016 UTC and Quest was repressurized at 2020 UTC. The third EVA was on Jun 13, again from the Quest airlock. Depress was at 1512 UTC with hatch open probably at 1514 and battery power at 1516. The astronauts replaced the wrist roll joint on the station's Canadarm-2 SSRMS robot arm; the old joint was stowed in Endeavour's cargo bay for return to Earth. The hatch was closed at 2229 UTC and the airlock was repressurized at 2233 UTC. At around 1918 UTC on Jun 14 the Shuttle RMS unberthed the Leonardo logistics module from Unity and put it back in the cargo bay, berthing it at 2011 UTC. On Jun 15 the hatches between Shuttle and Station were closed at 1223 UTC, with the Ex-5 crew now aboard Station and the Ex-4 crew on the Shuttle for the trip home. Endeavour undocked at 1432 UTC, leaving the Station in a 389 x 399 km x 51.6 deg orbit following three reboost burns. After two days of bad weather, Endeavour was diverted to Edwards AFB in California, with a deorbit burn at 1650 UTC on Jun 19 lowering its orbit from 347 x 387 km to 34 x 386 km. The Shuttle nominally entered the atmosphere around 1726 UTC and landed on runway 22 at Edwards at 1747 UTC. The next Shuttle mission is probably STS-107, which will fly an independent research mission carrying out microgravity experiments. However, launches are currently suspended pending investigation of cracks found in Orbiter fuel lines. Recent Launches --------------- A Krunichev Proton-K put a Russian domestic communications satellite in orbit on Jun 10. Ekspress A No. 4 was built by NPO PM and Alcatel for GP Kosmicheskaya Svyaz', the Russian satcom operator, which calls the satellite Ekspress A1R. According to an Energiya press release, the Proton's parking orbit was off-nominal but the Energiya 11S861-01 Blok DM-2M upper stage corrected for this and delivered the payload to the correct orbit. Parking orbit was about 180 x 185 km x 51.6 deg; transfer orbit after the first DM-2M burn was 328 x 36133 km x 47.4 deg; orbit at spacecraft separation was 36102 x 36171 km x 0.2 deg. Two SOZ ullage motors were left in the transfer orbit. Two Iridium replacement satellites, SV97 and SV98, were launched on Jun 20 at 0933 UTC by a Krunichev Rokot vehicle from Plesetsk. The mobile telephone satellites are owned by Iridium Satellite LLC, the successor to bankrupt Iridium LLC. The Rokot consists of the two-stage UR-100NU ballistic missile with a Briz-KM upper stage based on the S5.92 engine (originally flown on space probes like Fobos). Based on previous Rokot launches, the probable profile is that the second UR-100NU stage burnt out and separated at 5 min after launch, followed by a roughly 9 min Briz first burn to a transfer orbit of roughly (120-200) x 660 km; at apogee the Briz then restarted at around 1040 UTC over the South Atlantic to enter a 658 x 669 km x 86.6 deg orbit and deployed the two Iridium satellites. At roughly 1130 UTC Briz then made a third burn to a 232 x 662 km x 86.6 deg disposal orbit from where it will reenter quickly. However, I don't have any firm information on the transfer orbit phase. Here is a list of the Briz upper stage launches to date: Date Launch vehicle Upper Stage Payload Notes 1990 Nov 20 Rokot Briz-K - Suborbital test 1991 Dec 20 Rokot Briz-K Grand Prix Suborbital test 1994 Dec 26 Rokot Briz-K Radio-ROSTO 1999 Jul 5 Proton-K Briz-M No. 1L Raduga Launch failure 2000 May 16 Rokot Briz-KM IKA 1/2 2000 Jun 6 Proton-K Briz-M No. 2L Gorizont 2001 Apr 7 Proton-M Briz-M No. 3L Ekran-M 2002 Mar 17 Rokot Briz-KM GRACE 1/2 2002 Jun 20 Rokot Briz-KM Iridium 97/98 The Galaxy 3C satellite was launched to geostationary transfer orbit by a Sea Launch Zenit-3SL. The rocket took off at 2239:30 UTC on Jun 15 from the Odyssey floating launch platform at its standard 154W 0N location. The Zenit second stage and the DM third stage with payload entered a -2160 x 195 km suborbital trajectory at 2248:10. At about 2252 UTC the DM stage entered a 180 x 393 km x 0 deg parking orbit. A second burn of the DM at 2324 to 2330 UTC put Galaxy 3C in a 358 x 41440 km x 0.02 deg transfer orbit This is a record low inclination for a geostationary transfer orbit. The satellite's R-4D apogee engine will put the Boeing BSS-702 satellite in geostationary orbit. The satellite is the first 702 model to use extra solar panels instead of the solar concentrators which ran into fogging problems on the earlier 702 flights. The Intelsat 905 satellite uses a new version of the venerable General Dynamics R-4D bipropellant engine, the R-4D-15 HiPAT (High Performance Apogee Thruster) with a thrust of 445N. The first two HiPATs were built by Marquardt/Van Nuys, but new ones are built at GD's Redmond site. By Jun 15, I-905 was in a 35642 x 35793 km x 0.1 deg geostationary drift orbit at 26 deg W. Lockheed Martin launched Titan 23G-14, a refurbished Titan II missile, from Vandenberg on Jun 24 at 1823 UTC. The two-stage Titan put the NOAA M satellite on a suborbital trajectory of about -2500 x 820 km x 98 deg. at 1829 UTC. At 1837 UTC the NOAA M propulsion module fired its ATK/Thiokol Star 37XFP solid motor for the orbit insertion burn, followed by a hydrazine trim burn to put the satellite in an 807 x 822 km x 98.8 deg operational orbit. NOAA M becomes NOAA 17 on entering service with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as the primary morning weather satellite, supplementing the NOAA 16 afternoon satellite. Built by Lockheed Martin, NOAA M carries weather imagers and microwave and infrared sounders, as well as a SARSAT search-and-rescue package. It has an on-orbit mass of 1475 kg. Thanks to Igor Lissov for confirming the Kosmos-2389 launch time of 1814:41 UTC. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. May 4 0131 SPOT 5 ) Ariane 42P Kourou ELA2 Imaging 21A Idefix ) Amateur radio 21B May 4 0954 Aqua Delta 7920-10L Vandenberg SLC2W Rem.sensing 22A May 7 1700 DirecTV-5 Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur LC81 Comms 23A May 15 0150 Feng Yun 1D ) Chang Zheng 4B Taiyuan Weather 24B Hai Yang 1 ) Rem.sensing 24A May 28 1525 'Ofeq-5 Shaviyt Palmachim Imaging 25A May 28 1815 Kosmos-2389 Kosmos-3M Plesetsk Navigation 26A Jun 5 0644 Intelsat 905 Ariane 44L Kourou ELA2 Comms. 27A Jun 5 2122 Endeavour ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 28A Leonardo ) Jun 10 0114 Ekspress A1R Proton-K/DM2M? Baykonur LC200 Comms 29A Jun 15 2239 Galaxy 3C Zenit-3SL Odyssey, POR Comms 30A Jun 20 0933 Iridium SV97 ) Rokot/Briz-KM Plesetsk LC133 Comms 31A Iridium SV98 ) Comms 31B Jun 24 1823 NOAA 17 Titan 23G Vandenberg SLC4W Weather 32A Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF STS-107 2002 Aug? Spacehab OV-103 Discovery OPF Maintenance OV-104 Atlantis OPF STS-112 2002 Aug? ISS 9A OV-105 Endeavour Edwards STS-113 2002 Oct? ISS 11A .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'