Jonathan's Space Report - **** 25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION **** No. 693 2014 Feb 9 Somerville, MA --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- International Space Station --------------------------- The Cygnus Orb-1 mission was launched on Jan 9. This was the first launch of Orbital's Antares 120 variant, with a more powerful ATK Castor 30B second stage replacing the Castor 30 used on earlier flights. The Cygnus cargo ship SS C. Gordon Fullerton, with an orbit insertion mass of approximately 4750 kg, entered a 221 x 259 km x 51.6 deg orbit to begin its rendezvous sequence with ISS. The Gordon Fullerton's pressurized cargo module contains 1465 kg of cargo for ISS including two bags with a total mas of 152 kg containing a set of cubesats - a remarkable set of 28 Dove 3U Earth-observing cubesats (about 5 kg each) for Planet Labs and five 1U/2U cubesats: 2U Ardusat-2, for NanoSatisfi Inc., carries an Arduino processor which will run experiments by hobbyists and students. 1U SkyCube-1 carries VGA cameras, an amateur radio transponder and a deorbit drag balloon, for Southern Stars Group LLC of San Francisco. 1U UAP-SAT, a test satellite from Universidad Alas Peruanas, Lima, a Peruvian aviation university. 1U LituanicaSat-1, a test satellite from a Lithuanian group centered at Kauno technology university in Kaunas. It is named after an airplane used for a historic 1933 transatlantic flight. 1U Litsat-1, a test satellite from the Lithuanian Space Association (Lietuvos Kosmoso Asociacija) in Vilnius. The first of the cubesats are being prepared for deployment from the Kibo module. The Gordon Fullerton arrived at 250 metres from ISS at 1001 UTC Jan 12, and moved in to the 10m capture position by 1059 UTC. It was captured by the Canadarm-2 at 1108 UTC and berthed on the Harmony module's nadir port at 1305 UTC. On Jan 27 Kotov and Ryazanskiy performed spacewalk VKD-37a, a rerun of December's attempt to install the UrtheCast video cameras outside the Zvezda module. This time the cameras were left outside, and the high res camera was returning telemetry; the medium res camera, however, is still not working. The Pirs module hatch was open at 1400 UTC and closed at 2008 UTC. The Progress M-20M cargo ship undocked from the Pirs module at 1621 UTC on Feb 3. On Feb 5 the replacement Progress M-22M cargo ship was launched from Baykonur on ISS mission 54P and it docked with Pirs at 2222 UTC that day. Progress M-21M remains docked at the Zvezda module. The International Space Station, with a mass of around 413 metric tons including the docked vehicles, was in a 413 x 419 km x 51.7 deg low Earth orbit on Feb 8. Gaia ---- The Gaia astronomical observatory made the first of two critical L2 insertion burns on Jan 7. Thrusters fired from 1858 to 2014 UTC. After a second burn on Jan 14, Gaia entered a 263000 x 707000 x 370000 km Lissajous orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 point. Gaia's CCDs are working and observations of stars are underway. GSAT-14 ------- India launched its Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) on Jan 5, placing the GSAT-14 satellite in a 182 x 35755 km x 19.4 deg geostationary transfer orbit. By Jan 7 its onboard apogee engine had placed it in a 32543 x 35741 km x 0.7 deg subsynchronous orbit on the way to GEO and by Feb 4 it was on station at 73.9E. GSAT-14 carries C and Ku band comms payloads, and Ka-band beacons for a propagation study. Thaicom 6 --------- SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket on its second successful geostationary transfer orbit insertion mission on Jan 6. The initial burn of the Falcon 9 second stage reached a 197 x 497 km parking orbit per spaceflightnow.com, and a second burn at 2233 UTC sent the Thaicom 6 payload to a 375 x 90039 km x 22.5 deg supersync transfer orbit. By Feb 3 the satellite had manuevered to a 35784 x 35789 km x 0.1 deg geostationary orbit over 78.4 deg East. The Falcon 9 second stage remains in a 348 x 89584 km x 22.0 deg orbit. Thaicom 6 is an Orbital Star satellite with Ku and C-band payloads for coverage of SE Asia, Africa and the Middle East. It is owned by Thaicom Plc of Bangkok. Launch mass was 3016 kg. TDRS 12 ------- A new NASA Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, TDRS L, was launched on Jan 24 by an Atlas V. On reaching operational orbit it was renamed TDRS 12. The TDRS satellites provide space-to-space relays, channelling high bandwidth data from spacecraft to the ground. TDRS 12 is the second replenishment satellite in the third generation of the TDRS system. TDRS 1 to 7 were built by TRW (now Northrop Grumman) and launched between 1983 and 1995 on the Shuttle. TDRS 8 to 10 were built using the Hughes HS-601 bus, now the Boeing BSS-601, and launched in 2000-2002. TDRS 11, 12 and the forthcoming TDRS M use a high power version of the same bus, the BSS-601HP. On Feb 4 TDRS 12 was in a 35780 x 35795 km x 7.0 deg inclined geostationary orbit over 150.0 deg West. Ariane ------ Arianespace launched vehicle 572, an Ariane 5ECA model, to geostationary transfer orbit on Feb 8. It carried two satellites - ABS 2 for Hong-Kong-based Asia Broadcast Satellite, and Athena-Fidus. The latter is a joint French/Italian military communications satellite built by Thales Alenia/Cannes and operated by Telespazio for the Delegation Generale de l'Armement and the Agenzia Spaziale Italiano. Cassini ------- The Cassini probe made its T-97 and T-98 flybys of Titan at 2201 UTC on Jan 1 (at 1400 km) and at 1914 UTC on Feb 2 (at 1236 km). The T-99 flyby is scheduled for 1628 UTC on Mar 6. As a result of these two latest flybys Cassini's Saturnocentric orbit was changed from 1.18 x 2.64 million km x 51.3 deg to 0.92 x 2.84 million km x 48.1 deg. Editorial - a quarter century of Jonathan's Space Report --------------------------------------------------------- The first issue of JSR was sent to an internal email distribution at my then and current place of work, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, on 1989 Jan 30, a quarter century ago. This was shortly after I had moved from the UK to the USA. As a teenager in England I had been lucky enough to attend meetings of the British Interplanetary Society and learn from experts such as Phillip Clark, Anthony Kenden, and Rex Hall, whose names will be familiar to readers of BIS magazines. A family friend at the Royal Aircraft Establishment had put me on the distribution for the RAE Tables of Earth Satellites at age 15, and I spent my evenings with a pocket calculator plotting orbits of Soviet spy satellites instead of studying for my A Level exams. I nevertheless made it in to Cambridge, and emerged eight years later with a decent grounding in maths, astrophysics and computer science. This lets me combine public information on space missions with my own independent number-crunching of the orbital data, and I try and make sure that each issue of JSR includes at least some original material. JSR began as a weekly report, but has become irregular and closer to monthly as my free time has shrunk. The distribution methods for JSR changed from email to ftp, Usenet, and then WWW; JSR now also has an associated social-media channel http://twitter.com/planet4589. But the JSR content remains as plain text (so that I can prepare it rapidly), and the focus remains unchanged: a concise summary of human and robotic extraterrestrial activity, aimed at a technically literate audience. My goal is to provide a journal of record for the space age, sufficiently objective and international in outlook that readers from all countries and of all political leanings can rely on it. I began it because I felt there was a need for such an information source. As the saying goes, if you want it done right... The scope of JSR is intended to cover robotic and human spaceflight activity; I do not, in general, cover prelaunch planning and preparation, ground control, budgets and finances or other terrestrial activities associated with spaceflight (I'm only one person and have to draw a line somewhere!) The JSR and the associated planet4589.org website have no budget and accept no advertising; I write the newsletter and site on my own time with my own personal resources to ensure its editorial independence, and make it freely available as a service to the aerospace community and the historical record. The content of the report may be freely reproduced as long as my authorship and the URL of the planet4589.org website are noted. Let me repeat from the 10th anniversary issue: I would like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to all of you who have been kind enough to send me information, corrections and encouragement over the years. I hope you will continue to find JSR a useful source of information! Table of Recent (orbital) Launches ---------------------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. Jan 5 1048 GSAT-14 GSLV Sriharikota SLP Comms 01A Jan 6 2206 Thaicom 6 Falcon 9 v1.1 Canaveral SLC40 Comms 02A Jan 9 1807 Cygnus Orb-1 Antares 120 Wallops MARS 0A Cargo 03A Jan 24 0233 TDRS 12 Atlas V 401 Canaveral SLC41 Comms 04A Feb 5 1623 Progress M-22M Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1/5 Cargo 05A Feb 6 2130 ABS 2 ) Ariane 5ECA Kourou ELA3 Comms 06A Athena-Fidus ) 06B Table of Recent (suborbital) Launches ---------------------------------- Date UT Payload/Flt Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission Apogee/km Dec 14 Kavoshgar Pazhuhesh Shahab-1 Semnan Bio 120 Dec 17 1236 GT210GM Minuteman III Vandenberg LF04 Op. test 1300? Dec 23 1128 Agni RV Agni 3 Chandipur Test 350 Dec 24 0700 Yars RV-1 ) Yars Plesetsk Test 1000? Yars RV-2 ) Yars RV-3 ) Yars RV-4 ) Dec 27 1730 Topol' RV Topol' Kapustin Yar Test 1000? Jan 3 Arrow KV Arrow 3 Palmachim Test 100? Jan 15 0909 FTX-18 target Terrier Orion Wallops Target 130? Jan 15 0909 FTX-18 target Terrier Orion Wallops Target 130? Jan 15 0909 FTX-18 target Terrier Orion Wallops Target 130? Jan 20 0522 Agni 4 RV Agni 4 Chandipur IC4 Test 900? .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | | | Somerville MA 02143 | inter : planet4589 at gmail | | USA | twitter: @planet4589 | | | | JSR: http://www.planet4589.org/jsr.html | | Back issues: http://www.planet4589.org/space/jsr/back | | Subscribe/unsub: http://www.planet4589.org/mailman/listinfo/jsr | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'