Jonathan's Space Report No. 400 1999 Jun 6 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Human spaceflight ------------------- The first Shuttle mission of the year, STS-96, took off on May 27 at 1049 UTC. After solid rocket booster separation at 1051 UTC, main engine cutoff at 1057 UTC, and separation of external tank ET-100, Discovery was in a 74 x 320 km x 51.6 deg transfer orbit. After the OMS-2 burn at 1132 UTC, the orbit was 324 x 341 km x 51.6 deg. Discovery docked with the International Space Station's PMA-2 docking port at 0424 UTC on May 29. ISS was in a 379 x 385 km x 51.6 deg orbit. In its current configuration, it consists of the PMA-2 docking port, NASA's Unity node, the NASA-owned, Russian-built Zarya module, and the PMA-1 docking unit connecting Unity and Zarya. On May 30 at 0256 UTC Tammy Jernigan and Dan Barry entered the payload bay of Discovery from the tunnel adapter hatch, and made a 7hr 55min spacewalk, transferring equipment to the exterior of the station. On May 31 at 0115 UTC the hatch to Unity was opened and the crew began several days of cargo transfers to the station. Battery units and communications equipment were replaced and sound insulation was added to Zarya. Discovery undocked from ISS at 2239 UTC on Jun 3 into a 385 x 399 km x 51.6 deg orbit, leaving the station without a crew aboard. At 0721 UTC on Jun 5 the Starshine satellite was ejected into a 379 x 396 km x 51.6 deg orbit from a canister at the rear of Discovery's payload bay. The small Starshine satellite, built by NRL, will be observed by students as part of an educational exercise. The payload bay doors were closed at around 0215 UTC on Jun 6 and the deorbit burn was at 0454 UTC. Discovery landed on runway 15 at Kennedy Space Center at 0602 UTC. It looks like the Mir space station might be abandoned in August, after the current crew completes its mission. Energiya hasn't managed to find funding to continue the program, although it wouldn't astonish me if the decision to shut Mir down was reversed yet again. Mir was launched in February 1986. If the Mir crew return without replacement before permanent occupation of ISS begins next year, there will be no humans in space for the first time since September 1989. STS-93/Chandra --------------- The Chandra spacecraft was connected to the IUS-27 upper stage on Jun 3, in the Vertical Processing Facility at Kennedy Space Center. On the same day, Columbia was towed from the Orbiter Processing Facility to the Vehicle Assembly Building and then connected to its external tank and solid rocket boosters to complete the STS-93 stack. The stack will be rolled out to the launch pad on Jun 7 and prepared for a launch in late July (the exact date is still being argued about). Recent Launches --------------- The NRO satellite launched on May 22 was placed in an initial 200 x 293 km x 63.4 deg orbit. It probably contains its own propulsion system to raise the orbit. My best guess now is that the payload is an NRL Titan Launch Dispenser which will deploy three ocean surveillance subsatellites in an 1100 km orbit, or a Satellite Data Systems comsat which will be placed by a kick motor into a Molniya-type elliptical orbit. India launched its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle from Sriharikota on May 26. PSLV-C2 launched the Oceansat (IRS-P4) satellite and two small subsatellites, Korea's Kitsat-3 and Germany's DLR-Tubsat-C. PSLV has a solid stage 1 and stage 3 with a liquid stage 2 using an Ariane-derived Vikas engine and a fourth stage with two small liquid engines. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) IRS-P4 is a 1036 kg remote sensing satellite with an ocean color imager experiment. The 110 kg Kitsat-3 is built by the Korea Advanced Inst. of Technology (KAIST) (earlier Kitsats were built in collaboration with Surrey Satellite) and carries a small earth imager. The 45 kg DLR-Tubsat-C was built by the Technical University of Berlin for the German space agency DLR, and also carries an imager. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. May 5 0100 Orion 3 Delta 8930 Canaveral SLC17B Comsat 24A May 10 0133 Feng Yun 1C ) CZ-4B Taiyuan Imaging 25A Shi Jian 5 ) Research 25B May 18 0509 TERRIERS ) Pegasus XL/H Vandenberg Space sci 26A MUBLCOM ) Comsat 26B May 20 2230 Nimiq 1 Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur LC81 Comsat 27A May 22 0936 USA 144? Titan 4 Vandenberg SLC4E Unknown 28A May 26 0622 OceanSat 1 ) PSLV Sriharikota Imaging 29A Kitsat-3 ) Imaging 29B DLR-Tubsat-C) Imaging 29C May 27 1049 Discovery ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39B Spaceship 30A Spacehab-DM ) Jun 5 0721 Starshine - OV-103, LEO Education 30B Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia VAB Bay 1 STS-93 NET Jul 18 OV-103 Discovery KSC RW15 STS-96 May 27 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/OV-102 VAB Bay 1 STS-93 MLP2/ MLP3/RSRM-71? VAB Bay 3 STS-99 .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'