Jonathan's Space Report Jun 26 1990 (no.43) ---------------------------------------------------- Launch of STS-38/Atlantis is due for mid July. Atlantis has been mated with the STS-38 stack and rolled out to pad 39A. OV-102 Columbia is undergoing repairs in the Orbiter Processing Facility. Orbital verification of the Hubble Space Telescope and the ROSAT observatory continue. The first image from the ROSAT PSPC detector was made last week. The HRI imager will have its first light next week. HST continues to show poorly focussed images and more data is being obtained on the state of the mirror alignment. Anatoli Solov'yov (Komandir) and Aleksandr Balandin (Bortinzhener) continue in orbit aboard the Mir complex. They will make an EVA to carry out repairs to the Soyuz TM-9 transport in mid July. The Kristall module has been moved to a side port opposite the Kvant-2 module. An Intelsat VI communications satellite was launched by Commercial Titan 3 on Jun 23. It successfully separated from the Titan and its Orbus 21S perigee kick motor fired to place it in geostationary transfer orbit. A Molniya-3 communications satellite was launched from Plesetsk on Jun 13. Kosmos-2083, a recon satellite, was launched into polar orbit on Jun 19. Kosmos-2084 was launched from Plesetsk on Jun 21. Analysis indicates that it was successfully placed in low parking orbit by a Molniya launch vehicle, but that the final stage malfunctioned and it ended up at an altitude of a few hundred kilometers instead of its intended elliptical orbit with an apogee of 40000 km. The payload is probably an early warning satellite. (c) 1990 Jonathan McDowell