Jonathan's Space Report No. 503 2003 Jun 30, Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Station -------------------- The Expedition 7 crew, Yuriy Malenchenko and Edward Lu, remain on board the Space Station. The ferry ship Soyuz TMA-2 (spacecraft 7K-STM 212) and two cargo ships, Progress M-47 (spacecraft 7K-TGM 247) and Progress M1-10 (spacecraft 7K-TGM 259) are docked to the Station. Recent Launches --------------- Russia has launched an 8K78M Molniya-M rocket from the northern Plesetsk spaceport carrying a Russian government Molniya-3 communications satellite. The Molniya-M rocket is just a Soyuz-U with an extra fourth state. The satellite entered a 211 x 559 km x 62.8 deg parking orbit, and then the Blok ML upper stage fired to put it in a 604 x 40578 km x 62.7 deg drift orbit with a 734 minute period; the orbit will later be adjusted to 717.8 minutes (semi-synchronous) with an onboard engine. By Jun 28 it was in a 719.1 minute, 631 x 39789 km x 62.9 deg orbit. The special orbital inclination of i = 63 degrees, ( sin i ) squared = 4/5, minimizes the rotation of the orbit in its plane due to the oblateness of the Earth, keeping the apogee in the northern hemisphere. Russian sources have not released the serial number of the payload, but it may possibly be Molniya-3 No. 65. US sources list it as Molniya 3-53 because it is the 53rd satellite to be given the Molniya-3 name, but the 3-53 designation is not used in official Russian sources. The first Molniya-3 was Molniya-3 No. 11 launched in Nov 1974; satellite series built by NPO Prikladnoi Mekhaniki always start with No. 11 - perhaps Nos. 1-10 are reserved for ground test articles or something. Subsequent satellites were launched somewhat out of production order and No. 14 was never launched, so we can't really guess the correct designation. 54 Molniya-3 satellites and one Molniya-3K have now been launched, including two satellites which were stranded in parking orbit and given Kosmos designations. Space Command has redesignated the two parts of Japan's USERS satellite for no very good reason: 2002-42A (27515) is now the SEM, still in orbit (although still listed as decayed in the NASA OIG site, new elements are being issued) and 2002-42H (27815) is now the REM, which landed on May 29 (although all the elements associated with it are actually orbital data for the SEM, and are for dates in early June after the REM landed). I think I'm not going to update my own catalog just yet in case they switch back again. Orbimage's Orbview-3 1-meter-resolution commercial imaging satellite was launched on Jun 26 by Orbital Sciences. The L-1011 carrier plane took off from Vandenberg AFB at 1757 UTC and dropped the Pegasus XL rocket at 1853 UTC, probably over the standard Pacific drop zone at 36.0N 123.0W. It reached a 366 x 430 km x 97.3 deg orbit at 1901 UTC deploying Orbview-3, which uses an Orbital Leostar bus and has a launch mass of 304 kg (probably including of order 50 kg of hydrazine for orbit raising; other sources imply that the 304 kg figure may be the bus only and does not include the 66 kg science instrument). This is the third Pegasus launch this year, following SORCE and GALEX. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. 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 Jun 2 1745 Mars Express Soyuz-FG/Fregat Baykonur LC31 Probe 22A Jun 4 1923 Kosmos-2398 Kosmos-3M Plesetsk Navigation 23A Jun 6 2215 AMC-9 Proton-K/Briz-M Baykonur LC200/39 Comms 24A Jun 8 1034 Progress M1-10 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 25A Jun 10 1356 Thuraya 2 Zenit-3SL Odyssey, Pacific Phone comms 26A Jun 10 1758 MER-A Spirit Delta 7925 Canaveral SLC17A Mars probe 27A Jun 11 2238 BSAT-2c ) Ariane 5G Kourou ELA3 Comms 28A Optus/D C1 ) Comms 28B Jun 19 2000 Molniya-3 Molniya-M Plesetsk LC43/3 Comms 29A Jun 26 1853 Orbview-3 Pegasus XL Vandenberg RW30/12 Imaging 30A .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'