Jonathan's Space Report

Jun 14 1991 (no.76)
----------------------------------------------------

Columbia landed at 1539UT on Jun 14, on runway 22 at Edwards AFB.
This completed the STS-40 Spacelab Life Sciences
1 mission.  Atlantis is being processed for the STS-43 mission which
will deploy another Tracking and Data Relay Satellite; this will be
followed by Discovery's STS-48 mission to launch the Upper Atmosphere
Research Satellite.  After the current mission, Columbia will undergo
modification for extended duration flights, its next mission being
another Spacelab flight about a year from now. This week Columbia
recaptured the 'Orbiter with most flight hours' record from Discovery,
with a total of 1804 hours 23 minutes in its 11 flights.

Anatoliy Artsebarksiy and Sergey Krikalyov continue in orbit
aboard the Mir/Kvant/Kvant-2/Kristall/Soyuz TM-12/Progress M-8 complex.

An Okean oceanographic remote sensing satellite built by NPO Yuzhnoye was
launched on Jun 4 by Tsiklon from Plesetsk.

Correction: the date of the Delta 111 explosion was May 1,
according to calculations by Mike McCants. Also, the deployment
of the classified USA-70 satellite, international designation
1991-31C, from the STS-39 mission is now confirmed.

___________________________________
|Current STS status:              |
|Orbiters                         |
|                                 |
|OV-102 Columbia        EAFB RW22 |
|OV-103 Discovery       OPF Bay 1 |
|OV-104 Atlantis        OPF Bay 2 |
|OV-105 Endeavour       VAB Bay 2 |
|                                 |
|ML/ET/SRB stacks                 |
|                                 |
|ML1/STS-43/ET          VAB Bay 1 |
|ML2                              |
|ML3                    VAB Bay 3 |
-----------------------------------


10 years ago: 4 Jun 1981. The Kosmos-1275 navigation satellite was launched.
On 1981 Jul 24 it disintegrated into many pieces, possibly as a result of colliding 
with another space object.

20 years ago: 6 Jun 1971. The first space station mission, with cosmonauts
Georgiy Dobrovol'skiy, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsaev launched in
Soyuz-11 to dock with the Salyut space lab and spend 22 days aboard.
Just prior to reentry on 29 June, a valve on the Soyuz-11 accidentally failed
open venting the cabin air and causing the deaths of all three crew members.

20 years ago: 15 Jun 1971. The first KH-9 HEXAGON ("Big Bird") spy satellite
was launched. The Big Bird has now been superseded by the Advanced Crystal
and Lacrosse recon satellites.

30 years ago: 8 Jun 1961. The Discoverer 24 spy satellite failed to reach orbit 
when its Agena engine did not ignite. Discoverer 25 completed a succesful mission
Jun 16-19.

(c) 1991 Jonathan McDowell. Information in this report is obtained
from public sources and does not reflect the official views of NASA.

 .-----------------------------------------------------------------------------.
 |  Jonathan McDowell                 |  phone : (205)544-7724                 |
 |  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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