Jonathan's Space Report No. 292 1996 Jul 10 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Mir --------------- Columbia closed its payload bay doors at 0850 UTC on Jul 7, fired its OMS engines for the deorbit burn at 1137 UTC, and landed at 1236:45 UTC on runway 33 at Kennedy Space Center. This was the longest Shuttle mission to date, 16 days 21 hr 47 min 45 sec for liftoff to main gear touchdown. Yet more errata - Helms was of course Payload Commander, not Pilot as I said in last week's erratum; launch time was 1449:00 UTC according to the MSFC report (my watch must have been wrong). Atlantis was rolled back to the VAB on Jul 10 because of Hurricane Bertha. It has not yet been decided whether to replace the solid boosters because of the discovery of hot gas damage in the SRB field joints for the STS-78 launch. That could delay the launch of STS-79 to Mir until September. The Mir complex lowered its orbit on Jul 2 and Jul 4 to prepare for the arrival of Soyuz TM-24 with the new Mir crew. Mir is now in a 376 x 390 km x 51.6 deg orbit; in June it had been in a 326 x 429 km x 51.6 deg orbit. The ferry ship will be launched by a Soyuz-U rocket instead of the uprated Soyuz-U2 usually used, and the Soyuz-U isn't powerful enough to reach Mir's standard orbit. Apparently TM-23 also used the U model, while earlier TM flights used the U2. (Thanks to Geoff Perry for information). Recent Launches --------------- China's Chang Zheng 3 (Long March 3) vehicle made a successful flight on Jul 3 carrying a commercial US-built satellite. The Hughes HS-376 model comsat, Apstar 1A, will provide communications relay services for APT (Asia Pacific Telecom) Satellite Co. of Hong Kong. The CZ-3 is an older design than the CZ-3B rocket which failed earlier this year and the CZ-2E model which was lost in 1995 carrying the HS-601 Apstar 2 satellite. Apstar 1A was delivered to a 225 x 42184 km x 26.93 deg transfer orbit. A Titan 4 rocket was launched on Jul 3 carrying a classified payload. This Titan 4 was vehicle K-2 (45K-2), and the unidentified upper stage motors are part of the payload. Observations indicate that the payload may have entered an initial orbit of 293 x 318 km x 55.0 deg. It may be a second generation Satellite Data System comsat payload, in which case it will maneuver to an elliptical orbit. Arianespace launched two communications satellites into geostationary transfer orbit on Jul 9, Arabsat 2A and Turksat 1C. The launch vehicle was the Ariane 44L variant, and was the 18th successful launch in a row for the Ariane 4. There have been 88 launches of the Ariane 1 to 4 family of rockets, with 7 failures. Arabsat 2A is the first of the Arabsat 2 series for the Arab Satellite Communications Satellite Organization of the Arab League, based in Saudi Arabia. The Aerospatiale Spacebus 3000 satellite has 22 Ku band and 12 C band transponders. Turksat 1C is also built by Aerospatiale and is a Spacebus 2000 model. It will provide communications services for the Ministry of Posts and Communications of the Republic of Turkey. Thanks to Yoshiro Yamada for the Gorizont launch time. TOMS was in a 340 x 943 km x 97.4 deg orbit on Jul 3. Table of Recent Launches ------------------------ Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. May 25 0205 Gorizont Proton-K/DM2 Baykonur Comsat 34A Jun 4 1234 Cluster F1 ) Ariane 5 Kourou ELA3 Science FTO Cluster F2 ) Cluster F3 ) Cluster F4 ) Jun 15 0655 Intelsat 709 Ariane 44P Kourou ELA2 Comsat 35A Jun 20 1449 Columbia ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39B Spaceship 36A Spacelab LMS 1) Jun 20 1845 Kosmos Soyuz-U Plesetsk Recon FTO Jul 2 0748 TOMS Pegasus XL Vandenberg Rem.sens. 37A Jul 3 0031 USA 125? Titan 404 Canaveral LC40 Comsat? 38A Jul 3 1047 Apstar 1A Chang Zheng 3 Xichang Comsat 39A Jul 9 2224 Arabsat 2A ) Ariane 44L Kourou ELA2 Comsat Turksat 1C ) Comsat Payloads no longer in orbit -------------------------- Jul 7 Columbia/LMS Landed at KSC Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 1 STS-80 Oct 31 OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-82 Feb 13 OV-104 Atlantis VAB STS-79 Jul 31 OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 3 OMDP ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/ VAB STS-80 ML2/RSRM-54/ET-80/OV-104 VAB STS-79 ML3/ LC39B STS-78 .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS6 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@urania.harvard.edu | | USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/QEDT/jcm/space/jsr/jsr.html | | ftp://sao-ftp.harvard.edu/pub/jcm/space/news/news.* | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'