Jonathan's Space Report
No. 529                                         2004 Jun 28, Somerville, MA
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The first piloted spaceflight by private company Scaled Composites was
accomplished on Jun 21, with Spaceship One flight 60L/15P. The White
Knight carrier aircraft, piloted by Brian Binnie, took off from Mojave
Airport (Runway 30/12) at 1347 UTC. The Spaceship One, piloted by Mike
Melvill, was dropped from White Knight at 1450 UTC at an altitude of
14.3 km and the Spaceship One's hybrid rocket fired for around 76
seconds, letting Melvill's craft soar to an apogee of 100.124 km.  The
vehicle landed back at Mojave on RW30 at 1514 UTC. There are reports
that a trim control device failed during the ascent, causing an unwanted
roll and reducing performance, but details are sketchy so far.
Nevertheless this is a historic moment, marking the real dawn of
commercial human spaceflight. The trajectory was highly suborbital, with
a perigee close to the center of the Earth - inertial orbit parameters
at apogee were about -6374 x 100 km x 35.0 deg. The inertial velocity at
apogee was probably at most 0.3 km/s; if they had launched east instead
of west they would have reached 0.5 km/s. The velocity needed for orbit
at 100 km is 7.8 km/s, a big difference.

A spacewalk by astronauts Gennadiy Padalka and Mike Fincke was cut short
on Jun 24 when the oxygen supply on Fincke's suit, Orlan M-26,
malfunctioned. Fincke was called back into the airlock just after
exiting it, when the pressure in an oxygen bottle started to decrease;
apparently a faulty switch was to blame and the problem can be worked
around for another try next week. The Pirs airlock was depressurized by
2156 UTC with the hatch opened at that time; Fincke exited at about 2200
and came back in at 2208. Padalka apparently stayed inside Pirs. The
hatch was closed at 2210 after 14 min 22s and the airlock was
repressurized at 2213 UTC.

Global Positioning System satellite GPS SVN 60 was launched on Jun 23
as flight GPS IIR-12. The Boeing Delta 7925 rocket's second stage
entered a 175 x 392 km x 36.9 deg parking orbit followed by a 191 x 1270 km
x 37.2 deg intermediate orbit; the spinning solid third stage then
fired to put GPS SVN 60 in transfer orbit.

Table of Recent Launches
-----------------------

Date UT       Name            Launch Vehicle  Site            Mission    INTL.  
                                                                          DES.

May  4 1242   DirecTV-7S        Zenit-3SL       Odyssey, Pacific  Comms      16A 
May 19 2222   AMC-11            Atlas IIAS      Canaveral SLC36B  Comms      17A
May 20 1747   ROCSAT-2          Taurus          Vandenberg 576-E  Imaging    18A
May 25 1234   Progress M-49     Soyuz-U         Baykonur LC1      Cargo      19A
May 28 0600   Kosmos-2405       Tsiklon-2       Baykonur LC90/20  Sigint     20A
Jun 10 0128   Kosmos-2406       Zenit-2         Baykonur LC45     Sigint     21A
Jun 16 2227   Intelsat 10-02    Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC200/39 Comms      22A
Jun 23 2254   GPS SVN 60        Delta 7925      Canaveral SLC17B  Navigation 23A

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|  Jonathan McDowell                 |  phone : (617) 495-7176            |
|  Somerville MA 02143               |  inter : jcm@host.planet4589.org   |
|  USA                               |          jcm@cfa.harvard.edu       |
|                                                                         |
| JSR: http://www.planet4589.org/jsr.html                                 |
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