Jonathan's Space Report

6 Sep 1991 (no.86)
----------------------------------------------------

Preparations for the Sep 12 launch of the Upper Atmosphere
Research Satellite on STS-48/Discovery continue.

Anatoliy Artsebarksiy and Sergey Krikalyov continue in orbit aboard the
Mir/Kvant/Sofora/Kvant-2/Kristall/Soyuz TM-12/Progress M-9 complex.  
Progress M-8 undocked and was deorbited on Aug 16. Progress M-9
was launched on Aug 20 and has now docked with the station,
bringing it supplies. The next launch is Soyuz TM-13 on Oct 2.

A Resurs-F remote sensing satellite was launched on Aug 21 by Soyuz from
Plesetsk.  The spacecraft uses the Vostok bus and is operated by the
Priroda center of the Soviet Geodesy and Cartography agency.  It'll be
interesting to see what happens to the All-Union state agencies in the
new republics, but my guess is that management of the space programs
will remain unchanged for the forseeable future (i.e.  at least till
teatime this afternoon). 

Kosmos-2154, a Soviet Navy navigation satellite, was launched from
Plesetsk on Aug 22.  This was the first launch of the R-14 IRBM based
Kosmos booster since a launch failure in June. 

Yuri 3B (BS 3B before launch), a Japanese TV broadcast satellite, was
launched by H-1 launch vehicle on Aug 25 and succesfully reached
synchronous orbit.  BS-2X and BS-3H were launch failures and BS-3A
has had on-orbit problems, so BS-3B is really important for the 
Japanese satellite broadcasting program. The H-1 launch vehicle is
operated by the NASDA applications space agency. BS-3B uses the
GE3000 bus first used by the RCA Advanced Satcom, but with a Japanese
apogee motor (I dont know what its called) first used on ETS 5.

Japan's other space agency, ISAS, which has responsibility for
science satellites, launched the Yohkoh ('Sunlight') satellite
on Aug 30 using a Mu 3S-II launch vehicle. The satellite carries
an array of X-ray instruments to observe the Sun.

Correction: the spacecraft launched on Jul 4 was Navstar 24, not
Navstar 22.
___________________________________
|Current STS status:              |
|Orbiters                         |
|                                 |
|OV-102 Columbia        Palmdale  |
|OV-103 Discovery       LC39A     |
|OV-104 Atlantis        OPF Bay 2 |
|OV-105 Endeavour       OPF Bay 1 |
|                                 |
|ML/ET/SRB stacks                 |
|                                 |
|ML1/STS-44             VAB Bay 3 |
|ML2                              |
|ML3/STS-48/ET/OV-103   LC39A     |
-----------------------------------

N.B.  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                               |                                        |
 '-----------------------------------------------------------------------------'