Jonathan's Space Report

Jul 17 1991 (no.80)
----------------------------------------------------

Atlantis is on the pad.  The STS-43 mission will deploy a Tracking and
Data Relay Satellite (TDRS), launch is scheduled for Jul 23.

Anatoliy Artsebarksiy and Sergey Krikalyov continue in orbit aboard the
Mir/Kvant/Kvant-2/Kristall/Soyuz TM-12/Progress M-8 complex.  
On Jul 15 they made a third EVA to erect a large structure
outside the station. Sergey has just been told that his ride
home in November has been cancelled for budgetary reasons and he'll
have to stay up till March.

Further correction: The Mak satellite was apparently launched on Jun 17.

The second Block IIB Navstar navigation satellite was launched
on July 4 at 0232 UT. The Delta 7925 launch vehicle also carried
an SDIO secondary payload, the LOSAT-X satellite. LOSAT-X was
to observe the spectra of rocket plumes as part of the effort
to develop ways to observe and target missiles in flight.
Anyone who knows what LOSAT stands for, please email me.

Two Soyuz launch vehicles flew into orbit on Jul 9 and Jul 10.  One
carried an advanced recon satellite with a six-month lifetime.  The
other flew into an 82 degree polar orbit with a Vostok class recoverable
satellite, which is probably a Resurs-F remote sensing satellite - but
it might be a Kosmos short duration spy satellite.  I havent got the
name of the satellite yet so I can't tell. 

A successful Ariane launch on Jul 16 orbited the European Space Agency's
ERS-1 Earth Resources Satellite. The satellite, based on the French
SPOT imager, carries an active microwave radar imager, altimeters
and a radiometer. The Ariane also carried the second ASAP Ariane
Structure for Auxiliary Payloads, carrying four microsatellites.
One is TUBSAT from the Technische Universitat Berlin, a small
scientific data relay satellite. SARA, from the French amateur
organization Esie-espace, is an amateur radio-astronomy payload.
UoSat 5 (UoSat-OSCAR 22) is Surrey Satellite Technology's payload
carrying SateLife's store and forward electronic mail communications
for medical organizations in Africa, as well as an experimental
 wide field CCD camera. Surrey Satellite Technology is a spinoff
company from the engineering department of the University of Surrey,
Guildford, England (where Ford Prefect wasn't from after all), 
where Dr. Martin Sweeting led development of earlier UoSats.
Orbcomm-X is an Orbital Sciences lightsat to be 
used by the State of Virginia Center for Innovative Technology
for communications experiments (project VaStar).

Another Orbital Sciences venture, the second Pegasus launch vehicle,
was due for launch today as this edition of JSR closed for press
(or whatever the appropriate noun is for what happens to an email
publication).
___________________________________
|Current STS status:              |
|Orbiters                         |
|                                 |
|OV-102 Columbia        OPF Bay 2 |
|OV-103 Discovery       OPF Bay 1 |
|OV-104 Atlantis        LC39A     |
|OV-105 Endeavour       VAB Bay 2 |
|                                 |
|ML/ET/SRB stacks                 |
|                                 |
|ML1/STS-43/ET/OV-104   LC39A     |
|ML2                              |
|ML3/STS-48             VAB Bay 3 |
-----------------------------------

Copyright 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                               |                                        |
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