Jonathan's Space Report No. 440 draft 2000 Dec 6, Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Stations -------------------- Endeavour was launched at 0306 UTC on Dec 1 on mission STS-97 to the International Space Station. The external tank and the Orbiter entered a 74 x 325 km orbit at 0314 UTC. Endeavour's OMS burn raised its perigee to 205 km at around 0347 UTC; the ET reentered over the Pacific. Endeavour docked with the Station's PMA-3 docking port at 1959 UTC on Dec 2. Astronauts will install the P6 solar panel truss during a series of spacewalks. The crew of STS-97 are: Commander - Brent Jett, Cmdr USN; Pilot - Michael Bloomfield, LtCol USAF; Mission Specialists - Joseph Tanner, NASA, Dr. Marc Garneau, CSA, and Carlos Noriega, LtCol USMC. The payload bay of Endeavour for STS-97 contains: Est. Mass (kg) Bay 1-2: Orbiter Docking System 1800 3 EMU spacesuits (S/N unknown) 360? FPPU experiment (in airlock) 23 Unknown APCU Assembly Power Converter Unit 35 Unknown APCU Assembly Power Converter Unit 35 Bay 3-6: ITS P6 Long Spacer 4000? TCS radiator (aft) 500? TCS radiator (starboard) 500? Bay 8-11: ITS P6 Integrated Equipment Assembly 7200? PV radiator P6 500? Bay 12-13: ITS P6 Photovoltaic Array/Beta Gimbal Asy. 1000? Solar array wing 2B 1070 Solar array wing 4B 1070 Bay 13S IMAX Cargo Bay Camera 238 Sill: Canadarm RMS 303 410 ------ Total payload bay cargo 18740 kg The main cargo is P6, which is made up of the LS (Long Spacer), PV-1 IEA (Integrated Equipment Assembly) and the PVAA (Photovoltaic Array). The LS carries two Thermal Control Systems with radiators to eject waste heat from the Station; these radiators will be moved to truss segments S4 and S6 later in assembly. The PVAA has solar array wings SAW-2B and SAW-4B, which were deployed to a span of 73 meters. The FPPU (Floating Potential Probe Experiment) will be installed on P6 to measure charge buildup as the arrays pass through the ionospheric plasma. P6 has devices to bleed off excess charge, and FPPU will see how well they are doing. I'm still trying to confirm details of the Boeing Rocketdyne APCUs. They are technically counted as orbiter support equipment rather than payloads by NASA, but I count anything mounted in the payload bay as a payload. There don't seem to be any photos online of Endeavour in the OPF and NASA PAO's don't have any documentation describing the APCUs. Thanks are due to Bill Harwood (of CBS and SpaceflightNow.com) for confirmation of the existence of these extra payload elements. As far as I can tell, the APCUs are boxes which provide Orbiter power to the Station; they first flew on STS-91 (providing simulated ISS power to the AMS experiment) and are probably attached to APCs (Adaptive Payload Carriers) somewhere in the bay - I suspect near the front at the ODS, but if anyone knows for sure please let me know. Readers should note that the STS-97 press kit contains wildly incorrect weight information for the Long Spacer and the PVA. I've had to guess at the subcomponent masses. The first STS-97 spacewalk began with airlock depress and hatch open at 1831 UTC on Dec 3. The suits went to battery power at 1835 UTC and Joe Tanner and Carlos Noriega left the airlock around 1845 UTC. Around 1932 UTC the RMS arm berthed P6 on the Z1 truss, and the astronauts manually latched it in place by 1940 UTC. There were some problems releasing latches on the solar array wings, but the first solar array began to deploy at 0123 UTC on Dec 4. This was the "starboard" (+X) array, wing SAW-2B. The port (-X) array, SAW-4B, was left undeployed. The astronauts closed the hatch at 0202 UTC on Dec 4 and repressurized at 0209 UTC for an EVA-1 duration of 7:38 (depress), 7:31 (hatch open/close), or 7:34 (NASA rule). The P6 PVR radiator was deployed on the +Y side of the IEA at 0414 UTC on Dec 4. The SAW-4B wing was deployed starting at 0052 UTC on Dec 5. The second spacewalk began on Dec 5 with depress at 1718 UTC, hatch open around 1719 UTC and battery power at 1721 UTC. Repress was at 2358 UTC. Duration was 6:40 (depress), 6:35 (hatch open/close), or 6:37 (NASA rule). The astronauts connected up P6 to the station, inspected the tension wires on wing 2B, and relocated the S-band antenna to the top of P6. They unlatched the aft TCS radiator, which was deployed sometime early on Dec 6. Progress M1-4 undocked from ISS's Zarya nadir port at 1623 UTC on Dec 1. The vehicle remains in orbit. Current Launches ---------------- The Israeli commercial imaging satellite EROS A1 was launched by a Start-1 (modified Topol' ICBM) rocket from the Russian Far Eastern spaceport 2-GIK at Svobodniy on Dec 6. EROS A1 is owned by ImageSat (an Israeli-led company registered in the Netherlands Antilles) and built by IAI using the Ofeq-3 design. Earlier Israeli-built satellites were launched by the Shaviyt rocket from Palmachim south of Tel Aviv. EROS A1 is in a 491 x 506 km x 97.3 deg sun-synchronous orbit together with the DS 5th stage. The fourth stage of Start-1 also normally reaches orbit, but has not yet been cataloged in this case. The third Sirius digital radio broadcast satellite was launched on Nov 30. International Launch Services launched a Krunichev Proton-K with an Energiya Blok DM3 upper stage from Baykonur. The Sirius satellite is a Loral FS-1300 series vehicle and will enter an elliptical 63 degree orbit. The QuickBird satellite launched on Nov 20 was 3.0m high and 1.6m x 1.6m in cross-section with a 5.2m solar array span; mass was 931 kg full and 899 kg dry (the satellite had four 4.4N hydrazine thrusters). QuickBird 1 was the second use of the Ball Aerospace BCP-2000 satellite; NASA's QuikScat, launched in Jun 1999, continues to operate. QuickBird 2 is under construction. Visual observations from Uruguay of reentering debris suggest that QB-1 reentered at around 0015 UTC on Nov 21. The last Kosmos-3M failure, in 1995, had a similar profile and was attributed to contamination in the oxidizer lines for the second stage main engine. A classified National Reconnaissance Office payload was launched on Dec 7 by a Lockheed Martin Atlas 2AS from Cape Canaveral. The Centaur placed the payload in a 176 x 831 km parking orbit and then in a 270 x 37490 km x 26.5 deg geostationary transfer orbit; it is probably either a data relay satellite which transfers spy satellite imagery to the ground, or a signals intelligence satellite. Errata ------ NASA's EO-1 is actually called Earth Observing 1; its original "Earth Orbiter 1" name was changed some time ago. The P6 IEA is the Integrated Equipment Assembly, not Integrated Electronics Assembly. I can't spell "millennium". Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Nov 10 1714 GPS SVN 41 Delta 7925 Canaveral SLC17A Navsat 71A Nov 16 0107 PAS 1R ) Ariane 5 Kourou ELA3 Commsat 72A AMSAT-Oscar-40) Commsat 72B STRV-1c ) Tech 72C STRV-1d ) Tech 72D Nov 16 0132 Progress M1-4 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 73A Nov 20 2300 QuickBird 1 Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC132 Imaging 74A Nov 21 1824 EO-1 ) Delta 7320 Vandenberg SLC2W Imaging 75A SAC-C ) Imaging 75B Munin ) Science 75C Nov 21 2356 Anik F-1 Ariane 44L Kourou ELA2 Commsat 76A Nov 30 1959 Sirius 3 Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur LC81L Commsat 77A Dec 1 0306 Endeavour) Space Shuttle Kennedy LC39 Spaceship 78A ITS P6 ) Station seg. Dec 6 1232 EROS A1 Start-1 Svobodniy Imaging 79A Dec 7 0247 USA 155? Atlas 2AS Canaveral SLC36A Commsat? 80A Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia Palmdale OMDP OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 1 STS-102 2001 Feb 15 ISS 5A.1 OV-104 Atlantis VAB Bay 1 STS-98 2001 Jan 18 ISS 5A OV-105 Endeavour LEO STS-97 2000 Dec 1 ISS 4A .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'