Jonathan's Space Report No. 710 2015 Mar 20 Somerville, MA --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- International Space Station --------------------------- On Mar 11 at 2244 UTC Soyuz TMA-14M undocked from the Poisk module with Expedition 42 crewmembers Aleksandr Samokutyaev, Barry Wilmore and Elena Serova. Expedition 43 then began under the command of Terry Virts, with FE-3 Anton Shkaplerov and FE-4 Samantha Cristoforetti also aboard. The crew will be rounded out later this month with Gennadiy Padalka, Mikhail Kornienko and Scott Kelly who are preparing for launch on Soyuz TMA-16M. Launch is currently scheduled for Mar 27. Soyuz TMA-14M performed its deorbit burn at 0116 UTC Mar 12 and landed in Kazakhstan at around 0208 UTC. Soyuz TMA-15M is docked at Rassvet; Progress M-25M is docked at Pirs and Progress M-26M at Zvezda. DSCOVR ------ I inadvertently omitted coverage of the DSCOVR launch from the last JSR. The Deep Space Climate Observatory, DSCOVR, was launched on Feb 11 after many years of gestation. Originally a NASA mission called Triana and centered around its Earth observation camera, it had at one point been scheduled for launch on the fatal STS-107 flight of Columbia, but was cancelled amid political controversy (it grew out of an idea by Vice-President Gore for whole-Earth imaging to raise eco-awareness) and placed in storage. The mission was reactivated as part of a NOAA (US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) effort to monitor `space weather', the flux of particles and radiation in the solar wind and its interaction with the Earth's outer atmosphere. DSCOVR is a 425 kg vehicle with an additional 145 kg of hydrazine propellant, and will be stationed at the Earth-Sun L1 point, 1.5 million km noonward from Earth. It carries a Faraday cup instrument to measure solar wind speed, an electron spectrometer and a magnetometer to measure local plasma and fields, as well as a broad band (0.2 to 100 microns) radiometer to measure the Earth's total energy output and the Earth Polychomatic Imaging Camera to return images of the full Earth disk. DSCOVR was launched on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral into a 184 x 186 km x 37 deg parking orbit; 30 min after launch the Falcon 9 second stage restarted to boost DSCOVR into a 187 x 1371156 km x 37 deg transfer orbit. When the probe reaches the L1 point it will enter a Lissajous orbit, tracing out a complex pattern around the gravitationally stable balance point. Radius of this pattern will initially be around 250000 km. I haven't obtained any orbital ephemeris data yet for DSCOVR, but today a colleague showed me some of the first science data to arrive. Congrats to the DSCOVR team. MMS --- NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission was launched on Mar 13. The mission consists of four identical spacecraft, each with a mass of 1000 kg plus 400 kg of propellant. The spacecraft will fly in a tetrahedral formation some tens of kilometres apart to disentangle spatial and temporal fluctuations in the magnetospheric particle and field environment. They will deploy wire booms with a span of 112 metres to measure electric fields. Use for formation-flying groups of spacecraft to study the magnetosphere began with Penn State's suborbital 'Mother-Daughter' payload NASA 8.28UI in Jan 1965. Early projects to use multiple widely separated satellite platforms for simultaneous magnetosphere measurements included the USSR 2D project (Elektron 1/2 and 3/4) in 1964 and NASA's Interplanetary Monitoring Platforms A to J in the 1960s and 1970s. The first close pair of magnetosphere probes was the NASA ISEE-1 and ESA ISEE-2, launched on the same rocket in Oct 1977. followed by the Interkosmos AUOS-Z/Czech Magion pair launched in 1978. Further AUOS-Z/Magion pairs were succeeded by the Interbol/Magion missions of 1995 and 1996. ESA's Cluster II mission which began in 2000 and continues in operation today introduced the 4-spacecraft tetrahedron approach that is being used by MMS. (Cluster I's quartet ended up in the Kourou swamp as a result of the first Ariane 5's ill-advised attempt to fly sideways.). The NASA/UC Berkely Themis mission used five spacecraft in disparate orbits; three remain operating around Earth while two have been reassigned to the ARTEMIS mission and are orbiting the Moon. Operational high Earth orbit magnetospheric observatories --------------------------------------------------------- Launch Date Current Orbit Operator Program km x km x deg Geotail 1992 Jul 24 48970 x 191278 x 8.5 JAXA/ISAS ISTP/GGS Cluster II FM5/C1 "Rumba" 2000 Aug 9 22016 x 110774 x 135.6 ESA ESA CS Cluster II FM6/C2 "Salsa" 2000 Jul 16 23452 x 109230 x 132.9 ESA ESA CS Cluster II FM7/C3 "Samba" 2000 Jul 16 22536 x 109702 x 132.8 ESA ESA CS Cluster II FM8/C4 "Tango" 2000 Aug 9 19254 x 113536 x 132.0 ESA ESA CS THEMIS A/P5 2007 Feb 17 802 x 70805 x 13.4 NASA/UCB NASA MIDEX THEMIS D/P3 2007 Feb 17 855 x 70723 x 8.3 NASA/UCB NASA MIDEX THEMIS E/P4 2007 Feb 17 852 x 70721 x 9.2 NASA/UCB NASA MIDEX TWINS-A 2006 Jun 28 1285 x 39065 x 63.7 NRO/SWRI NASA MOppEX TWINS-B 2008 Mar 13 1614 x 38739 x 63.1 NRO/SWRI NASA MOppEX Van Allen Probe A 2012 Aug 30 582 x 30515 x 9.8 NASA/APL NASA LWS Van Allen Probe B 2012 Aug 30 591 x 30672 x 9.8 NASA/APL NASA LWS MMS 1 2015 Mar 13 556 x 70139 x 28.9 NASA/LASP-CU NASA STP MMS 2 2015 Mar 13 551 x 70158 x 28.9 NASA/LASP-CU NASA STP MMS 3 2015 Mar 13 551 x 70180 x 28.8 NASA/LASP-CU NASA STP MMS 4 2015 Mar 13 552 x 70198 x 28.8 NASA/LASP-CU NASA STP WIND 1994 Nov 1 Earth-Sun L1 NASA-GSFC NASA GGS ACE 1997 Aug 25 Earth-Sun L1 NASA-GSFC NASA MIDEX DSCOVR 2015 Feb 11 En route to Earth-Sun L1 NOAA NOAA Ekspress AM-7 ------------- A new Ekspress satellite for Russia's Kosmicheskaya Svyaz (Space Comms. Co.) was launched on Mar 18. It is a Eurostar 3000 built by AirbusDS/Toulouse and had a launch mass of 5700 kg. Dawn ---- The Dawn probe flew past Ceres at 1900 UTC Feb 23 at an altitude of 38000 km; after several more days of ion engine thrust it was captured into orbit around Ceres at 1239 UTC Mar 6, at a distance of 61000 km. Dawn reached an apocereal height of 75000 km on Mar 18 and then began to descend towards its initial science orbit; scheduled orbit for Mar 20 was around 13000 x 76000 km x 31 deg. RRTV-SM -------- China's Phase 3 Lunar Program's Reentry Return Test Vehicle Service Module continues operations in lunar orbit. From Mar 3 to Mar 7 it simulated rendezvous and docking with an ascent vehicle, maneuvering in a 18 x 180 km orbit. Zwicky's pellets ----------------- On 1957 Oct 17 at 0505 UTC the US Air Force launched a sounding rocket, Aerobee USAF-88, from Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico to an apogee of 114 km. The ejected rocket nose cap carried three explosive devices (loosely, 'grenades') which were detonated at about 80 km altitude. Charge A, built by Thomas Poulter of Stanford, was expected to accelerate about 0.1 gram of material to very high velocities of order 14 km/s; Charge B, developed by John Rinehart of Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) in collaboration with Poulter, was designed to accelerate a slightly higher mass of particles to somewhat lower speed; Charge C, built by Fritz Zwicky of CalTech, used an iron oxide/aluminium thermite mixture that was intended to accelerate self-luminous material to velocities above 11 km/s. In the event two meteor trails were seen emanating from the explosion of the nose cone. Zwicky claimed that his pellet had reached Earth escape velocity and gone into orbit around the Sun (Engineering and Science, Jan 1958, p 20). This claim is often repeated uncritically, most recently in a fun article by Nick D'Alto in Smithsonian's Air and Space magazine: http://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/1957-two-tiny-pellets-were-first-man-made-objects-escape-earths-gravity-180954622/ The article prompted me to look more deeply into the story, of which I've always been a bit skeptical. Zwicky was a genius. We revere him in astronomy because so many of his crazy ideas - like dark matter - turned out to be right - but not all of them. He is famous for many things, but from what I've heard, accepting that he might be wrong about something wasn't one of them. He never published a science paper on the pellet experiment. The only serious analysis I've seen is by R. McCrosky of SAO (Observations of Simulated Meteors, Smithsonian Contributions to Astrophysics, 5, 29 (1961) which can be found at http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1961SCoA....5...29M indicates that the observed meteor trails were from charges A and B, which were not self-luminous and so would only glow as they reentered the atmosphere heading down and burning up. A's speed was measured at 14.4 km/s (Earth-relative) while B's was in the range of 5 to 9 km/s. McCrosky doesn't say so explicitly, but the implication is that Zwicky's grenade didn't work. We may conclude that Poulter's Charge A pellet, with a mass around 0.1 grams, was (briefly) the first artifact to reach escape speed - but not escape velocity (i.e. it was going in the wrong direction). I really wanted the story of Zwicky's solar orbit pellets to be true, but it doesn't look good. Maybe McCrosky's analysis was wrong - I'm going to check if the relevant tracking plates are in the Harvard Plate Stacks but I doubt it, the plates from the NMSU ballistic cameras would probably have stayed in McCrosky's possession and I expect that they no longer exist. Without being able to check the raw data, it is reasonable to assume McCrosky's analysis is at least roughly correct. I conclude that Zwicky's claim is unlikely to be true and, sadly, should not be accepted as historical fact. There were more artificial meteor experiments in the 1960s and 1970s, with pellets smashed down into the atmosphere at super-escape-speeds. In the 1960s the use of grenades to create shock waves used to measure upper atmosphere temperatures and wind speeds was common, but I don't think they would have had the energy to accelerate material to escape speeds. Table of Recent (orbital) Launches ---------------------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. Catalog Perigee Apogee Incl Notes km km deg Feb 1 0121 IGS Radar Spare H-IIA 202 Tanegashima Radar Imager 04A S40381 490 x 511 x 97.5 Feb 1 1231 Inmarsat 5F2 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC200/39 Comms 05A S40384 4366 x 64968 x 26.8 Feb 2 0850? Fajr Safir Semnan Imaging 06A S40387 224 x 469 x 55.5 Feb 5 1250? AESP-14 - Kibo RMS, ISS Tech 98-67FM S40389 397 x 405 x 51.6 Feb 11 1340 IXV ) Vega Kourou ZLV Reentry Test U01 A08334 76 x 416 x 5.4 AVUM VV04 ) Tech U01 A08335 220 x 430 x 5.4 Feb 11 2303 DSCOVR Falcon 9 v1.1 Canaveral SLC40 Space sci 07A S40390 187 x1371156 x 33.1 Feb 17 1100 Progress M-26M Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1/5 Cargo 08A S40392 186 x 237 x 51.6 Docked ISS Feb 27 1101 Kosmos-2503 Soyuz-2-1A Plesetsk LC43/4 Imaging 09A S40420 327 x 539 x 97.6 0245LT Feb 27 1430 Flock 1b-27 ) ISS Kibo, LEO Imaging 98-67FN S40422 396 x 404 x 51.7 Flock 1b-28 ) Imaging 98-67FP S40423 396 x 404 x 51.7 Mar 2 0125 Flock 1b-21 ) ISS Kibo, LEO Imaging 98-67FQ S40427 395 x 402 x 51.7 Flock 1b-22 ) Imaging 98-67FR S40428 395 x 402 x 51.7 Mar 2 0350 ABS-3A ) Falcon 9 v1.1 Canaveral SLC40 Comms 10A S40424 358 x 63319 x 24.8 Eutel.115 West B ) Comms 10B S40425 360 x 63379 x 24.8 Mar 2 0845 Flock 1b-9 ) ISS Kibo, LEO Imaging 98-67FS S40429 392 x 407 x 51.6 Flock 1b-10 ) Imaging 98-67FT S40430 398 x 413 x 51.6 Mar 3 0300 Flock 1d'-1 ) ISS Kibo, LEO Imaging 98-67FU S40451 393 x 405 x 51.6 Flock 1d'-2 ) Imaging 98-67FV S40452 393 x 406 x 51.6 Mar 3 1050 Flock 1b-5 ) ISS Kibo, LEO Imaging 98-67FW S40453 394 x 407 x 51.6 Flock 1b-6 ) Imaging 98-67FX S40454 392 x 407 x 51.6 Mar 4 0120 TechEdSat-4 ) ISS Kibo, LEO Tech 98-67FY S40455 393 x 402 x 51.6 GEARRSat ) Comms 98-67FZ S40456 395 x 404 x 51.6 Mar 4 0830 MicroMAS ) ISS Kibo, LEO Sci 98-67GA S40457 393 x 406 x 51.6 LambdaSat ) Tech/Comms 98-67GB S40458 393 x 405 x 51.6 Mar 5 0145 Flock 1b-11 ) ISS Kibo, LEO Imaging 98-67GC S40459 395 x 405 x 51.6 Flock 1b-12 ) Imaging 98-67GD S40460 395 x 405 x 51.6 Mar 13 0244 MMS 1 ) Atlas V 421 Canaveral SLC41 Sci 11A S40482 559 x 70130 x 28.9 MMS 2 ) Sci 11B S40483 554 x 70159 x 28.9 MMS 3 ) Sci 11C S40484 554 x 70174 x 28.9 MMS 4 ) Sci 11D S40485 554 x 70190 x 28.9 Mar 18 2205 Ekspress AM-7 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC200/39 Comms 12A S40505 5406 x 35752 x 19.9 Table of Recent (suborbital) Launches ---------------------------------- Date UT Payload/Flt Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission Apogee/km Feb 19 2206 ICI-4 VS-30/Imp. Orion Andoya Aurora 365 Feb 22 0752 Cryofenix VSB-30 Kiruna Tech 265 Feb 22 USN RV ) Trident II D-5 SSBN, Pacific Test 1000? USN RV ) USN RV ) USN RV ) Feb 22 USN RV ) Trident II D-5 SSBN, Pacific Test 1000? USN RV ) USN RV ) USN RV ) Feb 24 0730 FTX-19 Target Terrier Oriole Wallops I Target 150? Feb 24 0730 FTX-19 Target Terrier Oriole Wallops I Target 150? Feb 24 0730 FTX-19 Target Terrier Oriole Wallops I Target 150? Feb 25 1226 NASA 36.299DR Black Brant IX White Sands Ionosphere 300? Mar 1 2133 RV Hwasong 6? Nampo, N Korea Test 134 Mar 1 2141 RV Hwasong 6? Nampo, N Korea Test 134 Mar 5 0144 WADIS 2 VS-30 Andoya Atm.Sci 126 Mar 9 RV Shaheen 3 Somniani? Test 500? .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'