Jonathan's Space Report No. 500 2003 May 29, Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Editorial --------- On the occasion of the 500th issue of JSR, I would like to thank my loyal readers for their input over the past 14 years. The mission of JSR is to provide accurate technical information on human activities in space both direct and robotic, particularly when that information is not otherwise readily available. I use open sources including magazines, press releases, archival materials, and telephonic harrassment of long-suffering public affairs representatives, as well as performing my own trajectory calculations using orbital elements provided by US Space Command and other sources. Feedback from knowledgeable readers has been critical in maintaining the quality of JSR. Since I get no renumeration for this effort and since my goal is to be impartial and apolitical, I believe space program insiders feel a little freer about sharing their technical data with me than with a commercial source. The result is, I hope, a consistent presentation of the latest space events, without the usual emphasis on activities by any one country, and with the sort of quantitative detail that engineers and scientists like to see but non-technical media and public affairs representatives rarely provide. I remain committed to publishing corrections and clarifications when errors are drawn to my attention, so that JSR can stand as a journal of record for space launch activities. The JSR usually restricts itself to events that have already happened and that occurred either in space or on the way to space; I avoid, on principle, discussions of launch schedules and other astrological forecasts, as well as ground based events such as contracts, program management and ground tests - others are better qualified than I to report on these matters. I also rarely cover matters concerning suborbital launches and space debris, because I just don't have time to do the subject justice - although I do maintain catalogs of both these subjects on the web site, with occasional updates. As an academic, I get to speculate on matters which may not be in the public record for either commercial or, occasionally, security reasons (although my policy is to speculate only on the general mission and orbits of currently operating classified satellites, and not on details of their sensors and capabilities). As always in academia, my speculations and evaluations represent my own personal opinions and are not any kind of official statement of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics or any of the other institutions with which I am affiliated. You are welcome to quote information from the JSR elsewhere. However, if you are going to reproduce large parts of the JSR or of any of the original materials on my web site, a brief acknowledgement and a link back to my site would be greatly appreciated. (In contrast, for example, the blatant copying of my entire launch log in Jane's Spaceflight Directory with no attribution whatsoever is discourteous). The JSR began in 1989 (via email and ftp, then later Usenet and eventually http) as a nominally weekly publication. As other duties have crowded out my free time, I have repeatedly changed the definition of a week, and at the moment one week is defined to last about 30 days. I hope to continue issuing JSR as long as there is demand for it, but you'll have to bear with me if issues are occasionally few and far between. When I began this adventure I expected an audience of about five of my friends. There are now over 3000 direct email subscribers and many more who just read it on the web or in some forwarded version. It's hard to know from email addresses with .biz,.com etc where people are, but those whose addresses include country domains indicate that JSR reaches over 65 countries or provinces from Antigua to Zimbabwe. I know that's not the complete list (I have readers in the Marshall Islands who don't use the .mh domain) so if you are somewhere not in the list, drop me a line... To the many thousands of you around the world, thank you for being interested enough to read my ramblings! And now, back to the news... Jonathan ------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Station -------------------- The Expedition 7 crew, Yuriy Malenchenko and Edward Lu, are on board the Space Station. Soyuz TMA-2 is docked to the Station and acts as the crew return vehicle. The Shuttle fleet remains grounded for the indefinite future, while the STS-107 investigation is expected to conclude sometime this summer. Recent Launches --------------- Japan has launched an interplanetary probe, MUSES-C. The first launch of the ISAS M-V rocket since the Astro-E failure appears to have gone without a hitch, although details are sketchy. The first three stages of M-V-5 probably placed MUSES-C in Earth orbit. The KM-V2 kick motor then put MUSES-C in solar orbit and separated. This should leave three objects in space: MUSES-C and its KM-V2 kick motor, which have been cataloged as 2003-19A and 19B, both in solar orbit, and the M-34 third stage in Earth orbit, which has not yet been cataloged. However, it is possible that the M-34 stage was suborbital. Any readers who can clarify this are requested to contact me. MUSES C was named Hayabusa (Falcon) after launch. It will use solar electric (ion) propulsion to rendezvous with minor planet (25143) 1998 SF36 in Sep 2005 and return a sample to Earth. Lockheed Martin launched AV-002, the second Atlas V, on May 13. It placed Hellas Sat 2 in supersynchronous transfer orbit of 395 x 84737 km x 17.0 deg. The Atlas V 401 uses a single-engine Common Centaur upper stage. Hellas Sat 2 is an Astrium Eurostar 2000+ satellite for the Greek/Cypriot Hellas Sat consortium based in Athens. Hellas Sat 1 is the old Kopernikus DFS-3 satellite launched in 1992 and leased by HellasSat in 2002. China has launched the third Beidou navigation satellite into geostationary transfer orbit. The Chang Zheng 3A rocket took off from Xichang at 1634 UTC on May 24, and its third stage made a first burn to low parking orbit followed by a second burn to a 196 x 41701 km x 25.0 deg supersynchrnonous transfer orbit. Beidou used its apogee motor (probably an FY-25 model) to circularize its path into a near-geostationary drift orbit around May 26. Errata ------ Oops - typo in the GALEX text: of course, 135-180 nm is the far UV band, and 180-300 nm is the near UV band, not vice versa. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Apr 2 0153 Molniya-1T Molniya-M Plesetsk Comms 11A Apr 8 1343 Milstar 6 Titan 4 Centaur Canaveral SLC40 Comms 12A Apr 9 2252 Galaxy 12 ) Ariane 5G Kourou ELA3 Comms 13B Insat 3A ) Comms 13A Apr 12 0047 Asiasat 4 Atlas 3B/SEC Canaveral SLC36B Comms 14A Apr 24 0423 Kosmos-2397 Proton-K/DM2 Baykonur LC81/24 Early Warn 15A Apr 26 0353 Soyuz TMA-2 Soyuz-FG Baykonur LC1/5 Spaceship 16A Apr 28 1159 GALEX Pegasus XL Canaveral RW30/12 UV Astron 17A May 8 1128 GSAT-2 GSLV Sriharikota Comms 18A May 9 0429 Hayabusa M-V Kagoshima Probe 19A May 13 2210 Hellas Sat 2 Atlas V 401 Canaveral SLC41 Comms 20A May 24 1634 Beidou CZ-3A Xichang Navigation 21A .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'