Jonathan's Space Report No. 616 2009 Sep 30 Somerville, MA -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Station -------------------- The Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle, HTV-1, was launched on Sep 10 into a 185 x 301 km x 51.6 deg orbit. This was the first launch of the H-IIB rocket, which has a larger diameter first stage than the old H-IIA, with two LE-5A main engines instead of one, and four large SRB-A strapons instead of two. HTV-1 completed its rendezvous with the Station on Sep 17. It approached to within 10m of the Harmony module, and the Canadarm-2 grappled it and berthed it to Harmony's nadir port. The SMILES and HREP experiments were transferred to the Kibo Exposed Facility on Sep 24. Discovery landed on runway 22 at Edwards Air Force Base at 0053 UTC on Sep 12. It flew back to KSC aboard Shuttle Carrier Aircraft NASA 911 on Sep 20-21. Progress M-67 undocked from the aft Zvezda port at 0725 UTC on Sep 21. Soyuz TMA-16 is scheduled to launch on Sep 30, carrying Maksim Suraev, Jeffrey Williams and Guy Laliberte to the Station. PAN --- The orbit I gave in the last JSR for the secret PAN communications satellite was erroneous. Based on information on nasaspaceflight.com and from Bob Christy, the orbital data were around 176 x 21761 km x 25.4 deg at MECO-1, 175 x 21622 km just before engine restart, and 7314 x 35400 km x 23.1 deg at spacecraft separation, which occurred about 17400 km over the Indian Ocean. First transfer orbit apogee was over the equator at 95E, at around 0420 UTC on Sep 9. On Sep 22, the spacecraft was in geostationary orbit over 34 deg E according to hobbyist observations. Meteor-M -------- The first Meteor-M satellite was launched on Sep 17. Replacing the old Meteor-3M satellite, the upgraded satellite carries a new generation of weather instruments for the Russian Hydrometeorological Service and is built by VNII EM. Several small satellites were deployed on the same launch. Launch vehicle was the Soyuz-2-1b with a Fregat upper stage. The following Soyuz-2-1a and -1b transition vehicles have now flown: 1 Soyuz 2-1a 2004 Nov 8 Suborbital test flight 2 Soyuz 2-1a/Fregat 2006 Oct 19 ESA Metop 2 3 Soyuz 2-1a/Fregat 2006 Dec 24 Meridian 1 4 Soyuz 2-1b/Fregat 2006 Dec 27 CNES COROT 5 Soyuz 2-1b 2008 Jul 26 Persona 6 Soyuz 2-1a/Fregat 2009 May 21 Meridian 2 7 Soyuz 2-1b/Fregat 2009 Sep 17 Meteor-M The Soyuz-2-1b third stage reached a 185 x 198 km x 98.8 deg orbit at 1604 UTC. The Fregat stage separated and made two burns at around 1606 and 1652 UTC to an 814 x 820 km orbit, where it deployed the 2755 kg Meteor-M and the small 7 kg Blits satellite at 1653 UTC. Blits, built by NII Pretsizionnogo Priborostroeniya (NIIPP) of Moscow, is a spherical glass lens to be used for laser geodesy. At 1745 UTC, three more satellites were ejected from the adapter truss on Fregat: Sterkh No. 12L, the second dedicated search-and-rescue satellite for the Russian Space Agency; Universitetskiy/Tat'yana-2, a 90 kg space physics research satellite built by students at MGU (Moscow State University); and UGATUSAT, a small 35 kg remote sensing satellite for the Ufimskiy Gosudarstvenniy Aviatsionniy Tekhnicheskiy Universitet (Ufa State Aviation Technical University) in Bashkortostan, a Russian autonomous republic. Fregat then made two further burns at about 1746 and 1835 UTC to descend to 490 x 504 km where it deployed Sumbandila, a South African imaging satellite, and deployed the Lavochkin/Astrium IRIS experment, two rigidizing masts carrying dummy solar arrays, in a test of inflatable structure technology. The Fregat was expected to make a final burn to deorbit itself on Sep 18, but was still in a 491 x 503 km orbit as of Sep 23. Nimiq 5 ------- Telesat's Nimiq 5 was launched by an ILS/Khrunichev Proton-M on Sep 17. The 4745 kg Loral-1300 class satellite was deployed into a 9434 x 35823 km x 13.0 deg orbit. By Sep 22 it was in a 20783 x 35816 km x 4.4 deg orbit. CARE ---- The Charged Aerosol Release Experiment, CARE I, was launched from Wallops Island on Sep 19, creating a cloud in the ionosphere that was widely seen in the nightime sky in the eastern United States. The rocket was a Black Brant XI (Talos-Terrier-Black Brant) not a Black Brant XII (Talos-Terrier-Black Brant-Nikha) as had been widely reported; it therefore got a BB-XI '39'-series flight designation, NASA 39.009DR, rather that a BB-XII '40'-series number. The rocket did indeed have a Nikha motor, but not as a fourth stage - the motor nozzle was removed and the motor was burnt in a test to release its propellant as a cloud of dusty plasma, studying its effects on the upper atmosphere. In this role, the motor was counted as part of the payload and not of the launch vehicle. Oceansat-2 ---------- ISRO, the Indian Space Research Organization, launched Oceansat-2 on Sep 23, a remote sensing satellite with an 8-band ocean color monitor, a radar scatterometer and a radio occultation atmospheric sounder. It also deployed four 1 kg Cubesats, and carried two Rubin maritime communications packages which remain attached to the PSLV final stage. The Cubesats are Uwe-2 for Julius-Maximilians-Universitat Wurzburg (Wurzburg, Bayern, Germany); SwissCube for the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland); BEESAT for the Technische Universitat Berlin; and ITU piko Satellite (ITU-p-SAT) for the Istanbul Teknik Universitesi in Istanbul. Launch vehicle was the PSLV-CA, the 'core-alone' version of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle; it was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. STSS ---- The STSS (Space Tracking and Surveillance System) Demo launch on Sep 23 placed the two STSS satellites in orbit using a Delta 7920 launch vehicle. STSS 1 and 2 were designated USA 208 and 209 after launch. The satellites were built by Northrop Grumman for the US Missile Defense Agency and will monitor missile flights using infrared sensors. Mass of the spacecraft is around 1000 kg each and they are in a 1350 x 1350 km x 58 deg orbit. Table of Recent (orbital) Launches ---------------------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Aug 11 1947 Asiasat 5 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC39/200 Comms 42A Aug 17 1035 GPS 50 Delta 7925 Canaveral SLC17A Nav 43A Aug 21 2209 JCSAT 12 ) Ariane 5ECA Kourou ELA3 Comms 44A Optus D3 ) Comms 44B Aug 25 0800 STSAT-2 Naro KSLV-1 Naro Tech F03 Aug 29 0400 Discovery STS-128) Space Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 45A Leonardo ) Aug 31 0928 Palapa D CZ-3B Xichang LC2 Comms 46A Sep 8 2135 USA 207 (PAN) Atlas V 401 Canaveral SLC41 Comms 47A Sep 10 1701 HTV H-IIB Tanegashima Y2 Cargo 48A Sep 17 1555 Meteor-M ) Soyuz-2-1b/Fregat Baykonur LC31 Weather 49A BLITS ) Geodesy 49G Tat'yana-2 ) Science 49 Sterkh 12L ) SAR 49 UGATUSAT ) Imaging 49 Sumbandila ) Tech 49F IRIS ) Tech/Imag. 49C Sep 17 1919 Nimiq-5 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC39/200 Comms 50A Sep 23 0621 Oceansat-2 ) PSLV-CA SDSC Imaging 51A UWE-2 ) Tech 51 BEESAT ) Tech 51 ITU-p-SAT 1 ) Tech 51 SwissCube ) Science 51 Rubin-9.1 ) Comms 51F Rubin-9.2 ) Comms 51F Sep 23 1220 STSS 1 ) Delta 7920 Canaveral SLC17 Tracking 52A STSS 2 ) Tracking 52A Table of Recent (suborbital) Launches ---------------------------------- Date UT Payload/Flt Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission Apogee/km Aug 11 0450 NASA 36.229DR Black Brant IX San Nicolas Target 150? Aug 17 1152 IRVE Support Viper 3A Wallops Weather 90? Aug 17 1252 NASA 36.254NR Black Brant IX Wallops Reentry test 210 Aug 23 1601 Mk 12 RV? GT195 Minuteman 3 Vandenberg Op. Test 1300? Sep 14 1740? NASA 36.221DS Black Brant IX White Sands Solar EUV 300? Sep 19 2346 NASA 39.009DR Black Brant XI Wallops Chem Release 283 Sep 27 Shahab RV Shahab 1 Iran Exercise 100? Sep 27 Shahab RV Shahab 2 Iran Exercise 100? Sep 28 Shahab RV Shahab 3 Iran Exercise 500? Sep 28 Sejjil RV Sejjil Iran Exercise 800? .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'