Jonathan's Space Report
No. 531 2004 Jul 25, Somerville, MA
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NASA's Aura research satellite was launched on Jul 15. The Boeing Delta
7920 rocket took off from Space Launch Complex 2-West at Vandenberg AFB
and reached a 185 x 691 km x 98.2 deg transfer orbit 11 minutes later.
At apogee a second burn placed Aura in a 673 x 681 km x 98.2 deg orbit.
The Delta rocket separated and made two more burns to change its
inclination and lower perigee to 202 x 673 km x 103.0 deg, ensuring that
the rocket will reenter quickly. Aura carries a hydrazine propulsion
system to maintain its orbit. When it reaches its final orbit of 705 km,
it will form part of the "A-Train", a constellation of remote sensing
satellites in the same afternoon-ascending-node, sun-synchronous,
orbital plane providing coordinated observations. Aqua leads the
A-train, with Aura trailing; smaller satellites will be launched
inbetween the two.
Aura is EOS Chemistry-1, the third large satellite in the Earth
Observing System series, with a launch mass of 3112 kg. The spacecraft,
built by Northrop Grumman Space Technology (formerly TRW), carries an
infrared radiometer and spectrometer, an ultraviolet/visible ozone
monitoring spectrometer, and a microwave sounder, and will study ozone
and pollutants in the atmosphere.
Arianespace launched the Canadian Anik F2 communications satllite on
July 18. The second uprated Ariane 5G+ took off from Kourou at 0044 UTC
as flight V163, vehicle 519. The core stage entered a 44 x 1553 km x 7.1
deg orbit at 0053 UTC and separated from the EPS upper stage. The core
stage reentered over the Pacific after one orbit, at around 0223 UTC.
The upper stage shut down at 0111 UTC and put Anik F2 in a 631 x 38370
km x 6.7 deg geostationary transfer orbit.
Anik F2 is a Boeing 702 model satellite with a mass of 5965 kg at
launch, and will provide high speed internet and digital communications
across North America. It includes C-band, Ku-band and Ka-band
communications payloads, a 490N bipropellant apogee engine and four
XIPS-25 ion thrusters for orbit control. The apogee engine was
fired for the first time on Jul 24 to raise perigee to 5900 km.
Russia launched a new Parus navigation satellite on Jul 22, naming it
Kosmos-2407. The 820 kg satellite was launched into a 951 x 1006 km x
83.0 deg orbit using a Kosmos-3M rocket from the northern launch site at
Plesetsk.
Tan Ce 2, the second probe in the Chinese-European Double Star
magnetospheric research program, was launched from the Taiyuan Space
Center on Jul 25. The CZ-2C/SM rocket entered a 666 x 38566 km x 90.1
deg polar orbit, complementing the 28-degree equatorial Tan Ce 1
launched from Xichang last year and the four European Cluster satellites
in deeper 22000 x 116000 km x 89 deg Earth orbits. Tan Ce 2 has a mass
of 343 kg.
Registration of satellites with the UN
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I've updated the UN satellite registry data on my web page.
France has updated its registration of satellites with the United Nations.
In UN document ST/SG/SER.E/445,
http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/Reports/Regdocs/ser445F.pdf,
submitted to the UN on 2004 Mar 4, it
gave a new list of satellites superseding previous information, which
includes the registration of 22 previously unregistered satellites. Although
I congratulate France on these corrections, regrettably there are
many errors in the part of the document covering earlier years
of the French space program; these errors are documented at
http://www.planet4589.org/space/un/france.html
In its latest submission to the UN, Russia for the first time since 1966
(with an arguable exception in 1985) failed to register one of its
satellites - the Gruzomaket dummy payload launched in December 2003 on
the first Strela test launch. The submission confirms the name of
2004-05A as Molniya-1T but surprisingly gives the official name of
2004-10A as Globus-1 instead of Raduga-1 (the Globus-1 name was
previously classified and Raduga-1 had been used as a cover name).
Meanwhile, the USA remains the main culprit for unregistered and
erroneously registered satellites - although most of these errors are
due to bureaucratic sloppiness, the 2003-54C classified surveillance
payload was mendaciously registered as "USA 173 debris" despite the fact
that independent observers have seen the satellite maneuver. Finally,
the Intelsat satellites remain unregistered by the UK.
Table of Recent Launches
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Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
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
Jun 29 0359 Telstar 18 Zenit-3SL Odyssey Comms 24A
Jun 29 0630 Demeter ) Dnepr Baykonur LC109 Science 25C
SaudiSat-2 ) Comms 25F
SaudiComsat-1 ) Comms 25D
LatinSat C ) Comms 25G
SaudiComsat-2 ) Comms 25E
Unisat-3 ) Tech 25H
AMSAT-Echo ) Comms 25K
Latinsat D ) Comms 25A
Jul 15 1002 Aura Delta 7920 Vandenberg SLC2W Science 26A
Jul 18 0044 Anik F2 Ariane 5G+ Kourou ELA3 Comms 27A
Jul 22 1746 Kosmos-2407 Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC132 Navigation 28A
Jul 25 0705 Tan Ce 2 CZ-2C/SM Taiyuan Science 29A
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| Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 |
| Somerville MA 02143 | inter : jcm@host.planet4589.org |
| USA | jcm@cfa.harvard.edu |
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