Jonathan's Space Report

Feb 14 1991 (no.65)

Space Report may continue to appear somewhat irregularly as I settle in
to my new home in Huntsville.  I hardly need to say that information
appearing here is gathered from open sources and reflects my own
interpretations; it is in no way anything official to do with NASA. 
----------------------------------------------------

Viktor Afans'ev and Musa Manarov continue in orbit aboard the
Mir/Kvant/Kvant-2/Kristall/Soyuz TM-11/Progress M-6 complex.  
The crew have performed three spacewalks so far. The first
on Jan 7 repaired the EVA hatch on Kvant-2. The second and
third on Jan 23 and Jan 26 set up a crane on the outside of
the Mir core module which will be used in later spacewalks to
transfer solar panels from the Kristall module to the Kvant
module at the other end of the station.

Orbiter Discovery, in the VAB, was mated to the STS-39 tank and
boosters on Feb 11. Launch is due in early March. Atlantis
and Columbia are in the Orbiter Processing Facility, and the
boosters and tank for STS-37, the next Atlantis mission, have
been mated in the VAB.

Kosmos-2121, launched Jan 17, is a Vostok class recon satellite
replacing Kosmos-2120 which landed the same day.

Kosmos-2122, launched Jan 18, is an ocean surveillance satellite
which tracks naval radio emissions.

Informator-1 was launched Jan 29 by a Kosmos R-14 into a 1000 km
polar (83 degree) orbit, the same orbit used by the Tsikada
and Nadezhda navigation satellites. I think it's a position-locator
satellite like Geostar, but my files are still in the moving
truck somewhere in the Eastern US and I don't have access to
Pravda or TASS at the moment (any volunteers?)

Kosmos-2123 was launched Feb 5 by a Kosmos R-14.  It appears to be a
standard Soviet military Transit-equivalent navigation satellite, in a
similar orbit to Informator-1. 

___________________________________
|Current STS status:              |
|Orbiters                         |
|                                 |
|OV-102 Columbia        OPF Bay 1 |
|OV-103 Discovery       VAB Bay 1 |
|OV-104 Atlantis        OPF Bay 2 |
|                                 |
|ML/ET/SRB stacks                 |
|                                 |
|ML1/STS-37/ET          VAB Bay 3 |
|ML2/STS-39/ET/OV-103   VAB Bay 1 |
-----------------------------------

(c) 1991 Jonathan McDowell

 .-----------------------------------------------------------------------------.
 |  Jonathan McDowell                 |  phone : (205)544-????                 |
 |  Space Science Lab ES65            | uucp:                                  |
 |  NASA Marshall Space Flight Center | bitnet :                               |
 |  Huntsville AL 35812               |  inter : mcdowell@xanth.msfc.nasa.gov  |
 |  USA                               |   span : ssl::mcdowell                 |
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