Jonathan's Space Report No. 357 1998 Apr 25 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A brief issue this week, as I have to catch a plane. Shuttle and Mir --------------- Musabaev and Budarin, in a spacewalk on Apr 22, attached the new VDU roll control engine to the end of the Sofora boom on the Kvant module. The STS-90/Neurolab mission continues in orbit, with the crew busy dissecting rats. Other rats are learning how to float in zero-g. The primary CO2 scrubber unit on Columbia failed on Apr 25 at 0345 UTC. If it can't be repaired, the mission will have to be brought home early. Recent Launches --------------- Four more Space Systems/Loral Globalstar communications satellites were launched on a Boeing Delta 7420 on Apr 24. The satellites join four Globalstars already in orbit and will form part of a telephone service constellation. The Cassini probe will make a flyby of Venus on Apr 26. Table of Recent Launches ------------------------ Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Mar 14 2246 Progress M-38 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 15A Mar 16 2132 UHF F/O F8 Atlas II Canaveral SLC36A Comsat 16A Mar 24 0146 SPOT 4 Ariane 40 Kourou ELA2 Imaging 17A Mar 25 1701 Iridium 51 ) CZ-2C/SD Taiyuan Comsat 18A Iridium 61 ) Comsat 18B Mar 30 0602 Iridium 55 Delta 7920 Vandenberg SLC2 Comsat 19A Iridium 57 Comsat 19B Iridium 58 Comsat 19C Iridium 59 Comsat 19D Iridium 60 Comsat 19E Apr 2 0242 TRACE Pegasus XL Vandenberg Solar obs. 20A Apr 7 0213 Iridium 62 Proton-K Baykonur Comsat 21A Iridium 63 Comsat 21B Iridium 64 Comsat 21C Iridium 65 Comsat 21D Iridium 66 Comsat 21E Iridium 67 Comsat 21F Iridium 68 Comsat 21G Apr 17 1819 Columbia ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39B Spaceship 22A Neurolab ) Apr 24 2238 Globalstar FM5?) Delta 7420 Canaveral LC17A Comsat 23A Globalstar FM6?) 23B Globalstar FM7?) 23C Globalstar FM8?) 23D Current Shuttle Processing Status __________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia LEO STS-90 Apr 17 OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-91 May 28 OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-88 ? MLP/SRB/ET/OV stacks MLP1/RSRM66/ET-96 VAB Bay 1 STS-91 MLP2/ MLP3/ .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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/~jcm/space/jsr/jsr.html | | Back issues: ftp://sao-ftp.harvard.edu/pub/jcm/space/news/news.* | | Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@head-cfa.harvard.edu, (un)subscribe jsr | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'