Jonathan's Space Report No. 395 1999 Apr 21 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Human spaceflight ------------------- On the Mir orbital station, Viktor Afanas'ev and Jean-Pierre Haignere made a spacewalk on Apr 16 for 6h 19m during which Haignere launched by hand the Sputnik-99 amateur radio satellite. The satellite was delivered by Progress M-41 in April; apparently the backup Sputnik-40 is still stored on the station. The spacewalk began at 0437 UTC (0837 Moscow local time) and the hatch was closed at 1056 UTC. The satellite deployment was probably around 1030 UTC, but if anyone has an accurate time please send it to me. Sputnik-99 is at the center of a controversy over use of the amateur radio band. The satellite was developed by AMSAT-F and AMSAT-R the French and Russian amateur radio satellite groups, with help from the Russian Space Agency's flight control center, TsUP. Apparently TsUP made the mistake of arranging with a commercial company for messages to be broadcast from the satellite including a trademarked advertising slogan, a flagrant misuse of the amateur radio band. At the last moment it was decided to launch the satellite without turning it on, avoiding breaking ITU regulations but at the cost of losing the original amateur radio mission. Space Command has given the satellite the designation 1999-21A, which would be a big change to the way international designations (stricly the province of the ICSU Committee on Space Research) are allocated. Normally the '21' would refer to the 21st launch from the Earth's surface in 1999. Sputnik-99 (called Sputnik Jr. 3 by Space Command, a name they seem to have made up) was delivered to Mir by Progress M-41 Under the traditional scheme, the satellite would be designated 1999-15C (3rd object cataloged from the Progress M-41 launch) or 1986-17NG (yet another object from the Mir launch). Other objects released into space during the same spacewalk were designated 1986-17MZ to 1986-17NF. It's perfectly reasonable for COSPAR to change the rules and count launches 'from a space station' as a new launch, and although I doubt that Space Command has the formal international authority to make such a rule change on its own, in practice I suspect others will follow along. It will be interesting to see if the new rule is applied consistently, and not clear why the debris gets a 1986-17 label but the payload gets the 1999-21 label. Discovery was moved to the VAB on Apr 16. Columbia took its parking spot in OPF bay 1. We don't know yet how the failure of the IUS (see below) will affect the launch date for STS-93 (the Chandra observatory uses the IUS to get to a highly elliptical orbit) but we are crossing our fingers and hoping the situation will be resolved speedily. Recent Launches --------------- Titan 4B-27 was launched on Apr 9 at 1701 UTC, the first Lockheed Martin Titan 4 launch since last August's failure. The SRMU-8 solid motors and K-32 two-stage liquid Titan core vehicle worked well, placing the DSP F19 payload and its Boeing IUS-21 upper stage vehicle in a 188 x 718 km x 28.6 deg parking orbit. The IUS is a two stage system; the first stage, SRM-1, using a UTC Orbus 21 solid motor, burned at 1814 UTC and increased apogee to geostationary altitude and separated. The SRM-2 stage was then meant to fire its Orbus 6E solid motor at 2334 UTC to lower inclination and increase perigee, placing DSP in a circular geosynchronous orbit. However, something went wrong: because the orbital data is classified, it's not clear whether SRM-2 did not fire at all or whether the burn was incomplete, but in any case DSP remained in an orbit far from geosynchronous, and is reportedly tumbling out of control. This is the first serious failure of the IUS since an April 1983 mission left the TDRS 1 satellite in a low orbit. The Titan's payload is a TRW Defense Support Program missile early warning satellite with an infrared telescope to detect rocket launches. Eutelsat W3 was launched by Atlas from Canaveral on Apr 12. The W3 satellite is an Alcatel Spacebus 3000B2 model for the European Telecommunications Satellite Organization. The Lockheed Martin Atlas IIAS vehicle entered a 153 x 385 km x 27.4 deg parking orbit nine minutes after launch. The second Centaur stage burn then delivered the satellite to a 166 x 46076 km x 19.7 deg transfer orbit. W3 will be stationed at 7E and carries 24 Ku-band transponders with a wide beam covering Europe, N Africa and Asia, and a spot beam for digital TV to Turkey. Four more Globalstar satellites were launched by Soyuz-U/Ikar from Baykonur on Apr 15. The third Soyuz-U/Ikar flight followed the same profile as the last one, and delivered the four spacecraft to a 900 x 950 km x 52.0 deg parking orbit. The on-board propulsion systems will raise the orbit of each satellite to the 1410 km operating altitude. The Blok-I stage entered a 234 x 900 km transfer orbit; the 50KS Ikar stage deorbited itself after one day. The new satellites are M19, M42, M44 and M45. Globalstar satellites, built by Alenia and Loral, are L-band comsats which will provide satellite phone service. 20 Globalstar satellites are now in orbit after two Delta and three Soyuz-U/Ikar launches (12 more satellites were lost in a Zenit-2 failure). The Landsat 7 remote sensing satellite was launched by Delta from Vandenberg on Apr 15. NASA's new remote sensing satellite will be operated by NASA/Goddard until Oct 2000, when operations will be transferred to the US Geological Survey. Its single instrument is the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+), a scanning radiometer with visible and infrared bands giving 30-meter resolution in the visible bands and 15-m resolution in black and white. Launch mass was 1969 kg. The spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin/Valley Forge, using a design derived from the Tiros-N/DMSP weather satellites. The Boeing Delta 7920-10 launch vehicle entered a 175 x 706 km x 98.2 deg initial orbit, then 57 min after launch circularized the orbit to 668 x 698 km and deployed Landsat 7. After the depletion burn, the Delta stage ended up in a 184 x 710 km x 107.5 deg orbit. Surrey Satellite's UoSAT-12 spacecraft was placed in orbit with the first launch of Russia's Dnepr rocket. The Dnepr is a converted R-36M2 (15A18M) ballistic missile (NATO codename SS-18 mod 4), developed by the Yuzhnoye (Pivdenne) organization in the Ukraine and marketed by MK Kosmotras. The R-36M2 is a two stage launch vehicle; both stages use nitrogen tetroxide and UDMH (unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine). The vehicle is 3.0m in diameter. A third stage, probably the S5M used on Tsiklon-3, will usually be added, but it wasn't on this test mission which doesn't involve the full Dnepr configuration. The Dnepr was launched from a silo (sources tell me it is probably LC108) at GIK-5, the Baykonur spaceport and delivered UoSAT-12 to a 638 x 652 km x 64.6 deg orbit. The final stage appears to have made some kind of depletion burn and is being tracked in a 599 x 1403 km x 64.6 deg orbit. UoSAT-12 is the first test of the Minibus platform, at 325 kg a larger spacecraft than earlier 50 kg Surrey UoSATs. It carries a mobile radio experiment (MERLION), a GPS receiver, and imaging cameras. Space Command have also cataloged SNAP-1, a 2.5 kg Surrey Nanosatellite Applications Program test of micro-electromechanical systems which was intended to be launched with UoSAT-12. However, Stefan Barensky informs me that his sources indicate SNAP-1 was not actually aboard the launch and is to be launched later in the year. I'll try and clarify this situation next week. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Mar 5 0256 WIRE Pegasus XL Vandenberg Astronomy 11A Mar 15 0306 Globalstar M022 ) Soyuz-U/Ikar Baykonur LC1 Comsat 12A Globalstar M041 ) Comsat 12B Globalstar M046 ) Comsat 12C Globalstar M037 ) Comsat 12D Mar 21 0009 Asiasat 3S Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur LC81L Comsat 13A Mar 28 0130 DemoSat Zenit-3SL Odyssey, POR Test 14A Apr 2 1128 Progress M-41 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 15A Apr 2 2203 Insat 2E Ariane 42P Kourou ELA2 Comsat 16A Apr 9 1701 DSP F19 Titan 4/IUS Canaveral LC41 Early Warn 17A Apr 12 2250 Eutelsat W3 Atlas 2AS Canaveral LC36A Comsat 18A Apr 15 0046 Globalstar M019 ) Soyuz-U/Ikar Baykonur LC1 Comsat 19A Globalstar M042 ) 19B Globalstar M044 ) 19C Globalstar M045 ) 19D Apr 15 1832 Landsat 7 Delta 7920-10 Vandenberg SLC2W Imaging 20A Apr 16 1030? Sputnik-99 - Mir, LEO Comsat 21A? Apr 21 0500 UoSAT-12 Dnepr Baykonur LC108 Test 22A Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia VAB Bay 2 STS-93 Unknown OV-103 Discovery VAB Bay 3 STS-96 May 20 OV-104 Atlantis OPF Bay 3 STS-101 Oct 14? OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 2 STS-99 Sep 18 MLP1/RSRM-69/ET-99 VAB Bay 1 STS-93 MLP2/RSRM-70/ET-100/OV-103 VAB Bay 3 STS-96 MLP3/ .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS6 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@cfa.harvard.edu | | USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/jsr.html | | Back issues: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/back | | Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@head-cfa.harvard.edu, (un)subscribe jsr | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'