Jonathan's Space Report No. 160 1993 Jul 6 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Shuttle ------- Endeavour landed on Jul 1 at Kennedy Space Center. Main gear touchdown on runway 33 was at 1252:16 UTC for a flight time of 239 hours 44 min 54 sec or just less than 10 days. Endeavour was rolled to Orbiter Processing Facility bay 1 for payload removal and preparation for its next flight - the Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission. Mir --- The Soyuz TM-17 spaceship was launched from Baykonur at 1432 UTC on Jul 1, carrying two Russian astronauts (the EO-14 long-stay Mir crew) and one French astronaut. The crew will carry out the French 'Altair' research mission aboard Mir until Jul 22 when the French astronaut will return to Earth with the EO-13 crew aboard Soyuz TM-16; the EO-14 crew will then begin their main mission, remaining aboard Mir until they are relieved at the beginning of December. Soyuz TM-17 has now docked with the Mir complex, probably replacing Progress M-17 at the rear Kvant port. (However, Space Command element sets still showed Progress M-17 docked to Mir on Jun 30). The complex now has Soyuz TM-16 docked at the APAS-89 port on Kristall, Progress M-18 docked at the prime Mir port, and Soyuz TM-17 at the rear Kvant port. Crew are: EO-13 commander Col. Gennadiy Mikhailovich Manakov (Air Force cosmonaut detachment); EO-13 flight engineer Aleksandr Fyodorovich Poleshchuk (NPO Energiya); EO-14 commander Lt.Col. Vasiliy Vasilevich Tsibliev (Air Force cosmonaut detachment); EO-14 flight engineer Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Serebrov (NPO Energiya); and Altair mission cosmonaut-researcher Col. Jean-Pierre Haignere (Centre national d'etudes spatiales, France). Serebrov is making his 4th spaceflight, having flown aboard Soyuz T-7, Soyuz T-8, and Soyuz TM-8. Tsibliev and Haignere are making their first flights. There have been more spaceflights by French citizens than by any other country except the (former) Soviet Union, the USA, and Germany. The French spaceflights have been typically longer than the German ones, so the total time in space by French citizens will again surpass that by the Germans at 0632 UTC on Jul 15. Spaceflights by German nationals: Spaceship Date Agency Days:hr:min 1 Sigmund J\"ahn Soyuz-31 1978 DDR/Interkosmos 07:20:49 2 Ulf Merbold Columbia/SL1 1983 ESA 10:07:47 3 Ernst Messerchmid Challenger/SLD1 1985 DFVLR 07:00:44 4 Reinhard F\"urrer Challenger/SLD1 1985 DFVLR 07:00:44 5 Klaus-Dietrich Flade Soyuz TM-14 1990 DFVLR 07:21:57 6 Ulf Merbold Columbia/IML-1 1992 ESA 08:01:15 7 Ulrich Walter Columbia/SLD2 1993 DLR 09:23:40 8 Hans-Wilhelm Schlegel Columbia/SLD2 1993 DLR 09:23:40 Total: 68:04:36 French spaceflights (all under the auspices of CNES): Spaceship Date Mission Days:hr:min 1 Jean-Loup Chr\'etien Soyuz T-6 (1982) 07:21:51 2 Patrick Baudry Discovery (1985) 51-G 07:01:39 3 Jean-Loup Chr\'etien Soyuz TM-7 (1988) Aragats 25:18:07 4 Michel Tognini Soyuz TM-15 (1992) Antares 13:18:59 5 Jean-Pierre Haign\'ere Soyuz TM-17 (1993) Altair (05:01:28 at 1600 Jul 6 ) (20:16:13 due by landing) Total: 59d 14h by 1600 Jul 6. [N.B. to non-TeX lovers: the \' in Haigner\'e indicates the presence of an acute accent over the following letter. I'll omit it in subsequent uses of his name.] Countries whose citizens have made spaceflights: USSR (Yuriy Gagarin, 1961 et. al.) USA (Alan Shepard, 1961 et. al.) Czechoslovakia (Vladimir Remek, 1978) Poland (Miroslaw Hermaszewski, 1978) Germany (DDR) (Sigmund J\"ahn, 1978 as DDR citizen) Bulgaria (Georgiy Ivanov, 1979; Alexander Alexandrov, 1988) Hungary (Farkas Bertalan, 1980) Vietnam (Pham Tuan, 1980) Cuba (Arnaldo Tamayo Mendez, 1980) Mongolia (Jugderdemidiyn Gurragcha, 1981) Romania (Dumitru Prunariu, 1981) France (Jean-Loup Chr\'etien, 1982 et. al.) Germany (Bundesrepublik) (Ulf Merbold, 1983 et. al.) India (Rakesh Sharma, 1984) Canada (Marc Garneau, 1984; Roberta Bondar, 1992; Steven MacLean, 1992) Saudi Arabia (Sultan al-Saud, 1985) Netherlands (Wubbo Ockels, 1985) Mexico (Rodolfo Neri Vela, 1985) Syria (Mohammed al Fares, 1987) Afghanistan (Abdul Ahad Mohmand Sarvar, 1988) Japan (Toyohiro Akiyama, 1990; Mamoru Mohri, 1992) United Kingdom (Helen Sharman, 1991) Austria (Franz Viehb\"ock, 1991) Belgium (Dirk Frimout, 1992) Switzerland (Claude Nicollier, 1992) Italy (Franco Malerba, 1992) I haven't tried to separate out the various Soviet nationalities as I am confused about the citizenship and nationality (as opposed to birthplace) of the various former Soviet astronauts. In addition, former citizens of Australia, Costa Rica, China, the Netherlands and Vietnam have made flights as naturalized American citizens. (Challenge for the enthusiastic: who were they?) Launches -------- Another Resurs-F satellite was launched on Jun 25, replacing the one which landed 5 days earlier. The Resurs-F satellites, built by the Central Specialized Design Bureau in Samara, Russia, carry out remote sensing photography for environmental and mapping research. Another contact was made with the Alexis satellite on Jun 30, raising hopes for recovering control of the spacecraft. Erratum: I have corrected launch times in the table for the last couple of launches in May. Date Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. May 26 0407 Molniya-1 Molniya Plesetsk Comsat 35A May 27 0122 Gorizont Proton Baykonur Comsat FTO Jun 16 0420 Kosmos-2251 Kosmos R-14 Plesetsk Comsat 36A Jun 21 1307 Endeavour Shuttle Kennedy Spaceship 37A Jun 21? Kosmos-2252 ) Tsiklon Plesetsk Comsat 38A Kosmos-2253 ) Comsat 38B Kosmos-2254 ) Comsat 38C Kosmos-2255 ) Comsat 38D Kosmos-2256 ) Comsat 38E Kosmos-2257 ) Comsat 38F Jun 25 0018 Galaxy 4H Ariane 42P Kourou Comsat 39A Jun 25 0840? Resurs-F Soyuz Plesetsk Remote sens. 40A Jun 25 2330 RADCAL Scout G-1 Vandenberg Calib. 41A Jun 26 1327 Navstar GPS 39) Delta 7925 Canaveral Navsat 42A SEDS 2/PMG ) Tether Jul 1 1432 Soyuz TM-17 Soyuz 2 Baykonur Spaceship 43A Reentries --------- Jun 7 Kosmos-2240 Landed in Kazakhstan? Jun 20 Resurs-F2 Landed in Kazakhstan Jul 1 Endeavour Landed at Kennedy Space Center Publication Review ------------------ WORLDWIDE SATELLITE LAUNCHES, by Phillip S. Clark. I thought readers might be interested to know about this publication. For thirty years the standard source of satellite launch information was the RAE Table of Earth Satellites, published by the British Royal Aircraft Establishment. It included launch and reentry dates and orbital heights and inclination for every payload and rocket stage launched into orbit. Funding cuts axed the RAE Tables last year, and Clark's WSL is essentially a privately produced continuation of them, with the same format of monthly issues which are then combined, corrected and reissued at the end of the year in an annual volume. Clark is one of the leading researchers on the Chinese and former Soviet space programs, and his expertise shows in the production of the first 6 issues of WSL; the data seems to be at least as reliable as that which came from the RAE. There are even a large number of improvements; launch sites are included; more details are given on the missions of the payloads and the names of the rocket stages and other objects associated with the launch; and more details are given on newly cataloged fragments. However, estimates of future orbital lifetime of the satellites are no longer included; this was an important part of the RAE's own research. Also, Clark retains the limited orbital information of the RAE tables (perigee, apogee, argument of perigee, inclination and approximate epoch). The inclusion of the ascending node and an accurate perigee passage time would allow proper orbital calculations to be done, and it is a pity that he hasn't done this. Another disappointment is the low quality of the presentation; in this era of sophisticated desktop publishing, I had hoped for something more than the old-style printer output. Hopefully if Phillip makes some more money out of this he'll be able to afford a proper computer. But overall, I would say that the WSL is an excellent replacement for the old RAE tables. [TRUTH IN ADVERTISING WARNING: I know Phillip personally, so I'd like you to buy his stuff. But it is good. Honest!] The annual subscription for the WSL tables is US $100, available from Phil at Molniya Space Consultancy, 30 Sonia Gardens, Heston, Middlesex TW5 0LZ, England. Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 2 STS-58 OV-103 Discovery LC39B STS-51 OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-61 ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/RSRM-34 VAB Bay 3 STS-58 ML3/RSRM-33/ET-59/OV-103 LC39B STS-51 .-----------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS4 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@urania.harvard.edu | | USA | | '-----------------------------------------------------------------------------'