Jonathan's Space Report No. 227 1995 Jan 18 Cambridge, MA -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle -------- OV-103 Discovery, attached to the STS-63 stack on Mobile Launcher 1, was moved to Pad 39B on Jan 10. It was transferred to the Vehicle Assembly Building on Jan 5 (not Feb 5 as I said last week!). Launch of mission STS-63 remains scheduled for Feb 2. Mir --- The Mir crew of Viktorenko, Kondakova and Polyakov boarded the Soyuz TM-20 ferry craft on Jan 11, and undocked from Mir's front port at 0900 UTC. The craft withdrew to about two hundred metres from Mir and then redocked in a test of the automatic Kurs system, which had failed in Progress M-24's attempted docking last year. Redocking came at 0925 UTC. On Jan 8 Valeriy Polyakov passed the one year mark in orbit. His flight is now the longest ever, beating the 365 day record of Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov set in 1988. New Launches ------------ The German space agency's Experiment Reentry Space System (EXPRESS) payload was launched on Jan 15 by Mu-3S-II from Kagoshima. The payload uses a Russian-built reentry vehicle and the launch was carried out by the Japanese ISAS space agency. It was due to land in the Australian desert after a five day flight, but a guidance failure on the M-23 second stage of the Mu launch vehicle apparently left the spacecraft and its final stage in an incorrect orbit; EXPRESS reentered the atmosphere over the Pacific within a few orbits. This was the 8th Mu-3S-II launch and the first to have a significant failure. These details are all provisional, I don't have full information yet. In particular, Yoshiro Yamada reports that the Mu-3S-II-8 was a four-stage version instead of the basic three-stage one. The standard Mu-3S-II has a M-13 first stage, an M-23 second stage, and an M-3B third stage. Four flights have used extra solid propellant KM-P, KM-M or KM-D kick motors as fourth stages. Mu launch history: Mu-4S vehicle: M-10/M-20/M-30/M-40 configuration. First launch 1966 with M-10 live only; 1969 with first three stages live; 3 of 4 orbital attempts successful 1970-1972. Mu-3C vehicle : M-10/M-22/M-3A configuration with thrust vector control second stage. 3 of 4 launches successful, 1974-1979. Mu-3H vehicle: M-13/M-22/M-3A configuration. 3 of 3 successful, 1977-1978, all flown with unidentified fourth stage kick motor? (any details welcome) Mu-3S vehicle: As Mu-3H but with thrust vector control added to M-13 stage. 4 of 4 successful, 1980-1984. Mu-3S-II vehicle: M-13/M-23/M-3B configuration. 1985 Jan 7 Mu-3S-II/KM-P MS-T5 (Sakigake) 1985 Aug 18 Mu-3S-II/KM-P Planet-A (Suisei) 1987 Feb 5 Mu-3S-II Astro-C (Ginga) 1989 Feb 21 Mu-3S-II/KM-D EXOS-D (Akebono) 1990 Jan 24 Mu-3S-II/KM-M MUSES-A (Hiten) + Hagoromo 1991 Aug 23 Mu-3S-II Solar-A (Yohkoh) 1993 Feb 20 Mu-3S-II Astro-D (Asuka) 1995 Jan 15 Mu-3S-II/? EXPRESS An Intelsat 7 satellite was launched by a Martin Marietta Atlas IIAS on Jan 10. The Atlas first stage (serial no. 8203) and its Castor IV solid strapons took off from Pad 36 at Cape Canaveral; the Centaur II AC-113 second stage then ignited to enter a 306 x 41000 km x 26.4 deg transfer orbit. The Space Systems/Loral Intelsat 7 satellite first fired its apogee engine on Jan 11 and over several days reached geostationary orbit; the profile is pretty typical for recent comsats with bipropellant engines, and I include each orbit reached below: Jan 10 306 x 41000 km x 26.4 deg Jan 11 1353 x 42238 km x 23.4 deg Jan 12 4033 x 41128 km x 15.7 deg Jan 12 16563 x 41116 km x 4.7 deg Jan 14 35787 x 36974 km x 0.2 deg Jan 16 35793 x 35809 km x 0.0 deg, 56 deg E drifting 0.2 deg/day Intelsat satellites are operated by the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization, an intergovernmental consortium with over a hundred member nations (the US participation is via Comsat Corporation). The first Intelsat satellite was Early Bird, launched in 1965. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Dec 1 2255 Panamsat K2 Ariane 42P Kourou ELA2 Comsat FTO Dec 14 1421 Molniya-1T Molniya-M Plesetsk LC43 Comsat 81A Dec 16 1200 Luch Proton-K/DM-2 Baykonur LC81 Comsat 82A Dec 20 0511 Kosmos-2298 Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC132 Comsat 83A Dec 22 2219 DSP F17 Titan 4/IUS Canaveral LC40 Early Warn 84A Dec 26 0301 Radio-ROSTO Rokot Baykonur LC175 Comsat 85A Dec 26 2227 Kosmos-2299 ) Tsiklon-3 Plesetsk LC32 Comsat 86A Kosmos-2300 ) Comsat 86B Kosmos-2301 ) Comsat 86C Kosmos-2302 ) Comsat 86D Kosmos-2303 ) Comsat 86E Kosmos-2304 ) Comsat 86F Dec 28 1131 Raduga Proton-K/DM-2 Baykonur LC81 Comsat 87A Dec 29 1130 Kosmos-2305 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC31 Recon 88A Dec 30 1002 NOAA-14 Atlas E Vandenberg SLC3 Weather 89A Jan 10 0618 Intelsat 704 Atlas IIAS Canaveral LC36 Comsat 01A Jan 15 1345 EXPRESS Mu-3S-II Kagoshima Materials Reentries --------- Dec 5 Molniya-3 (85-04A) Reentered Dec 9 Kosmos-2238 Reentered Jan 15 EXPRESS Reentered Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia Palmdale OMDP - OV-103 Discovery LC39B STS-63 Feb 2 OV-104 Atlantis OPF Bay 3 STS-71 Jun OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-67 Mar 2 ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/RSRM-42/ET-68/OV-103 LC39B STS-63 ML2/RSRM-43 VAB Bay 1 STS-67 ML3/ .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS4 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@urania.harvard.edu | | USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/QEDT/jcm/jsr.html | ! ftp://sao-ftp.harvard.edu/pub/jcm/space/news/news.* | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'