Jonathan's Space Report No. 542 2005 Jan 7, Somerville, MA. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * Space Station Progress M-51 docked with the Zvezda module on Dec 25 at 2358 UTC, bringing critical food supplies to crewmembers Chiao and Sharipov aboard the Station. * Sich-1M Russian authorities have confirmed that Sich-1M and Mikron did not reach their planned orbits. After launch at 1120 UTC on Dec 24, the Tsiklon-3 launch vehicle first stage separated at 48 km altitude and coasted to around 70 km before falling back to Earth. The second stage burned for two minutes and entered an approximately -2600 x 180 km suborbital path, falling in the East Siberian sea. The first burn of the third stage should have placed the vehicle in a roughly 78 x 650 km transfer orbit at 1126 UTC, coasting over the Arctic and then southward over the Pacific until 1200 UTC when it was at around 24 deg south latitude, while rising towards apogee. At this point the third stage fired again, raising the perigee point from 78 km to 280 km. The velocity increase was about 100 m/s too small to get to the desired 650 km circular orbit. (Russian newspapers have suggested that Sich-1M has an onboard propulsion system which will be used to reach the target orbit, but earlier satellites in the series don't have such a system and it's not mentioned in the official publicity information about the satellite). The MK-1TS subsatellite was attached to Sich-1M, and ejected from it at about 2100 UTC on Dec 25. * GLONASS Three Russian navigation satellites in orbit plane 1 of the GLONASS system were launched on Dec 26 from Baykonur by a Krunichev Proton-K rocket (serial 410-09) with an Energiya Blok DM-2 (serial 11S861 No. 104L) upper stage. Two of the satellites are standard Uragan satellites built by Polyot/Omsk, nos. 796 and 797, and one is an Uragan-M, no. 712, with an uprated Glonass-M payload, built by Reshetnev NPO-PM/Krasnoyarsk. They have been given the military cover names Kosmos-2411 to Kosmos-2413. This was the 33rd launch in the GLONASS program, and the third with an Uragan-M test flight. GLONASS is the Russian equivalent of the GPS system. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Nov 6 0310 ZY-2C CZ-4B Taiyuan Imaging 44A Nov 6 0539 GPS SVN 61 Delta 7925 Canaveral SLC17B Navigation 45A Nov 8 1830 Oblik Soyuz-2-1A Plesetsk LC43/4 Test U01 Nov 18 1045 Shiyan 2 CZ-2C Xichang Imaging 46A Nov 20 1716 Swift Delta 7320 Canaveral SLC17A Astronomy 47A Dec 17 1207 AMC 16 Atlas 521 Canaveral SLC41 Comms 48A Dec 18 1626 Helios 2A ) Ariane 5G+ Kourou ELA3 Imaging 49A Parasol ) Remote sen. 49G Nanosat ) Tech 49B Essaim 1 ) Sigint 49C Essaim 2 ) Sigint 49D Essaim 3 ) Sigint 49E Essaim 4 ) Sigint 49F Dec 21 2150 Demosat ) Delta 4H Canaveral SLC37B Test 50A 3CS-1 ) Imaging 3CS-2 ) Imaging Dec 23 2219 Progress M-51 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 51A Dec 24 1120 Sich-1M ) Tsiklon-3 Plesetsk LC32 Remote sen. 52A MK-1TS Mikron ) Imaging 52C Dec 26 1353 Kosmos-2411 ) Proton-K/DM-2 Baykonur LC81/23 Navigation 53A Kosmos-2412 ) Navigation 53B Kosmos-2413 ) Navigation 53C .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | | Back issues: http://www.planet4589.org/space/jsr/back | | Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@host.planet4589.org, (un)subscribe jsr | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'