Jonathan's Space Report No. 505 2003 Aug 1, Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Station -------------------- The Expedition 7 crew, Yuriy Malenchenko and Edward Lu, remain on board the Space Station. Novosti Kosmonavtiki magazine has published its account of the Soyuz TMA-1 landing, including the actual landing time of 0204:25 UTC on May 4 - I haven't seen this time published in English sources. The Columbia investigation board has a nice analysis of the foam impact on http://www.caib.us/news/documents/impact_velocity.pdf. One implication they don't draw is that, counter to the gut assumption made in pre-accident discussions, low density foam is arguably WORSE than high density ice. The change in velocity due to drag is proportional to one over the density, so the kinetic energy of impact is (1/2) mass times velocity squared, which is proportional to density times (1/density) squared, which is (1/density): the velocity change wins out over the mass increase, and low density material packs MORE bang (energy) and the SAME wallop (momentum m dv) as more dense material. However, it has been pointed out to me that the physics of the collision is a bit more complicated, for example due to differences in elasticity the foam collision probably deposits a smaller fraction of its energy, so that may cancel out the effect. Clearly from the imagery there are pieces of foam debris after the collision which still have significant energy. Recent Launches --------------- On Jul 17 Lockheed Martin launched AV-003, the first 500-series Atlas V. It is a 521 variant with a 5-m fairing, two Aerojet strapon solid boosters, and a single-engine Common Centaur upper stage; the previous two Atlas V launches were 400-series missions using a smaller fairing and no strapons. The enormous fairing made AV-003 highly reminiscent of a Titan IV. The vehicle entered a 167 x 4166 km x 27.1 deg parking orbit 15 min after launch, according to Spaceflightnow.com (Justin, thanks again for continuing to include these figures in your commentary, as the ILS webcast commentators never bother to quote them). The Centaur restarted near apogee and delivered the payload to a high-perigee geostationary transfer orbit of 3815 x 35761 km x 17.5 deg. This was the first flight of the Aerojet Atlas V SRM boosters, which with a mass of 46t and a size of 19.2m long, 1.6m diameter are comparable to the first stage of the MX/Peacekeeper ICBM (shorter and fatter at 10.7m long 2.3m diameter) - much bigger than the Delta GEM strapons, but much smaller than the Ariane 5 and Titan 4 SRBs. AV-003's payload is Rainbow 1, a satellite built by Lockheed Martin in Sunnyvale (the rocket is built by the Denver branch of LM). The A2100AX class satellite has a launch mass of 4328 kg and will be used by Cablevision Systems Corp of Bethpage, NY. By Jul 23 Rainbow 1 had used its Leros engine to reach an orbit of 10529 x 35746 km x 8.8 deg, and by Jul 29 it was on station at 62 deg W in a 35644 x 35931 km x 0.1 deg geostationary orbit. Canada's MOST astronomy satellite is successfully undergoing on-orbit checkout, with first light expected in the coming weeks. Questions For Readers --------------------- I'm trying to improve my log of objects in the geostationary corridor, adding debris that is not in the Space Command satellite catalog. It turns out that a number of geostationary weather satellites have ejected lens caps into orbit: Meteosat Second Generation (MSG 1) ejected two, although the recent GOES satellites have their cooler covers on hinges rather than ejecting them. I would be grateful if anyone who has worked on the earlier Meteosat, GOES/SMS, or NASDA GMS satellites can tell me whether or not these satellites ejected cooler covers. (For extra credit, provide ejection dates/times, dimensions and mass, and the same info for the ejected lower despun sections containing the spent apogee motors). Anyone else littering the geostationary band is encouraged to own up (e.g. telescope covers like those ejected from the DSP satellites). One funky example I came across in this search was the Canadian CTS (Communications Technology Satellite), launched in 1976. As with many satellites, it was spin-stabilized during the coast to geostationary orbit and prior to deploying its main solar array wings. Unusually, it got power during this period from an extra set of solar arrays mounted outside the folded-up array wings. Once CTS reached geostationary, it ejected these extra arrays, called JBSA (Jettisonable Body Solar Arrays), reducing its angular momentum and allowing the main wings to unfold (Acta Astronautica 5, 343). The 1.8-meter JBSAs do not currently appear in the satellite catalog, which is noticeably incomplete for older objects in high equatorial orbit - until the late 1980s, the US sensor net was still optimized for quickly distinguishing satellites from incoming missiles, and tracking high altitude debris was not a priority. CTS pioneered Ku-band satellite communications, and was used for early tests of broadcasting to remote locations in both Canada and Australia. Fun (Educational) Toys ------------------------------------- Dave Doody, from Cassini Flight Ops, draws my attention to http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/scalemodels/ Other News Sources ------------------ Brian Webb asked me to draw readers' attention to his free email newsletter concentrating on the Vandenberg area, http://home.earthlink.net/~kd6nrp/newsletter.htm The spaceflightnow.com site, Stefan Barensky's site, www.orbireport.com, and Aleskandr Zheleznyakov's site (in Russian) www.cosmoworld.ru/spaceencyclopedia/hotnews/, remain the best other general sources of timely on-line space information which contain original (primary source) information. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. 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 Jun 30 1415 Monitor-E mockup) Tech 31A Mimosa ) Science 31B MOST ) Rokot Plesetsk LC133 Astronomy 31D CUTE-I ) Tech 31E Quakesat ) Science 31F Can X-1 ) Tech 31H Cubesat XI-IV ) Tech 31J AAU-Cubesat ) Imaging 31G DTUSat ) Tether 31C Jul 8 0318 MER-B Opportunity Delta 7925H Canaveral SLC17B Mars probe 32A Jul 17 2345 Rainbow 1 Atlas V 521 Canaveral SLC41 Comms 33A .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'