Jonathan's Space Report No. 777 2020 Apr 17 Somerville, MA --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- COVID-19 -------- I am the one entity you get emails from who is *not* sending you a special email about what I'm doing about the pandemic. But: I hope you are all safe and well. International Space Station --------------------------- The Cygnus NG-12 cargo ship S.S. Alan Bean was deorbited over the Pacific on Mar 17; the last telemetry signal was at 2316:56 UTC. The Dextre robot arm removed the Bartolomeo experiment platform Dragon CRS-20's trunk on Mar 25. Bartolomeo was attached to the Columbus module on Apr 2. Dragon CRS-20 was unberthed from the Harmony module at about 1030 UTC Apr 7 and released into orbit at 1306 UTC. After a deorbit burn the cabin splashed down at about 117.5W 26.5N in the Pacific at 1850 UTC. Soyuz MS-16 was launched on Apr 9 at 0805 UTC and docked with the Poisk module after 6hr 8min at 1413 UTC. Crew of Soyuz MS-16 are Anatoliy Ivanishin, Ivan Vagner and Chris Cassidy. This was the first launch of a Soyuz-2-1a launch vehicle carrying a crew. After a one-week handover to the new crew, Chris Cassidy took command of ISS. Soyuz MS-15 undocked from the Zvezda module at 0153 UTC Apr 17 with Oleg Skripochka, Jessica Meir and Drew Morgan aboard, bringing Expedition 62 to a close and marking the start of Expedition 63. The deorbit burn was at 0422 UTC for 4m 41s, lowering the orbit to about -18 x 423 km. Soyuz MS-15 landed in Kazakhstan at 0516 UTC. Ariane ------- Last issue I inadvertently omitted discussion of the Ariane launch on Feb 18. On Feb 18 at 2218 UTC Ariane vehicle L5111, flight VA252, took off from Kourou and headed to a 6 degree inclination geotransfer orbit. This was the third launch of the new Ariane 5ECA+ variant with an ESC-D upper stage, stretched by 4 cm relative to the older ESC-A allowing it to carry 360 kg of additional propellant. The earlier 5ECA+ flights were VA249 and VA251. The upper payload was JCSAT-17 for Sky Perfect JSAT. with a launch mass of 5857 kg. Unlike previous JCSAT satellites, this one carries a large 18-metre-dia Harris S-band antenna on a long boom. The S-band system supports communications for disasters and other high traffic events. The satellite, using a Lockheed Martin A2100 buss, also carries the usual Ku-band and C-band communications payloads. The lower payload is GEO-Kompsat 2B, for South Korea's aerospace institute KARI. In the launch table I had accidentally labelled GEO-Kompsat 2B as "Comms" but it is a weather/remote sensing satellite, not a communications satellite. GEO-Kompsat 2B, with a launch mass of 3379 kg, carries the GOCI-II ocean color imager and the GEMS spectrometer. GEMS, built by Ball Aerospace, is a visible/UV spectrometer which gives hourly time resolution measurements of ozone and pollutants in the Asia-Pacific region. OSIRIS-REX ---------- The OSIRIS-REX space program remains in orbit around Bennu. It began the Recon B mission phase in January, with 620m altitude flybys of sites Nightingale and Osprey on Jan 22 and Feb 13 respectively. The Recon C phase is now underway. On Mar 3 at 1900 UTC the probe departed from its 1.4 km altitude orbit to perform a `swoop' over the Nightingale candidate landing site. It passed only 251.6 metres above Bennu's surface at 2129:48 UTC Mar 3 and reentered the 1.4 km orbit with a burn at 0005 UTC Mar 4. A 250m pass of site Osprey is expected in May. (Thanks to Erin Morton for the Mar 3-4 details). On Apr 14 O-REX carreid out a Checkpoint Rehearsal; at 1852 UTC it maneuvered from a 1.0 x 1.0 km orbit to a 0.13 x 1.0 km one. At 2251 UTC at 0.13 km altitude it made the `checkpoint burn' to begin descent to the asteroid. Then at 2300 UTC, as it reached a record close distance of 75m to the asteroid surface, it made a preplanned abort of the approach in a `backaway burn' and began its return to the 1 km orbit. The TAGSAM sampler was deployed and retracted during the operation. Starlink --------- Starlink-1220, one of the satellites on the 5th Starlink launch, was deorbited on Mar 9 from a 324 x 361 km orbit. As of Mar 10 there were 20 sats from launch 3 and 39 sats from launch 4 undergoing orbital plane drift at the 350 km `pause' altitude, with 40 of the launch 5 satellites reaching or paused at that altitude. On Mar 11 to 13 all 99 of these sats abruptly began raising their orbits again, without waiting for their target orbital planes to be reached. I speculate that the plane-relocation process requires extra personnel and the abrupt orbit raising towards the operational 550 km orbit is a contingency activity in response to COVID19. On Mar 18 SpaceX launched the sixth batch of satellites, A single burn of the upper stage placed the satellites in a 209 x 366 km orbit. The Falcon 9 first stage, on its fifth flight, suffered one engine shutdown during ascent, and failed to land on the droneship on descent. This did not affect the successful orbit insertion of the second stage. The second stage was deorbited over the eastern Pacific. Recent observations by Richard Cole (Res.Notes.AAS, in press) and Tregloan-Reed et al (arxiv2003.07251) show that in the days after reaching its operational orbit at the beginning of March, Starlink-1130 (Darksat) was indeed about a magnitude fainter than other Starlink satellites, indicating that the special coating has been reasonably successful. My own analysis of the astronomical impact of Starlink has been published as https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ab8016 (Astrophysical Journal Letters, v. 892) and https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.07446 OneWeb ------ 34 more OneWeb satellites were launched from Baykonur on Mar 21 into a 440 x 475 km parking orbit. The satellites will later raise their orbits to over 1000 km altitude. Meanwhile, the OneWeb operating company has gone bankrupt (although the associated manufacturing company OneWeb Satellites emphasizes that it, in contrast, is not bankrupt.) CZ-7A ----- The first Chang Zheng 7A failed to reach orbit on Mar 16, sometime after second stage ignition. It's unclear whether the failure was in the third stage's first burn, or possibly due to a second stage explosion. Planned parking orbit was 195 x 195 km x 20 deg; a second burn of the third stage would have delivered CAST/Beijing's XJS-6 (Xinjishu Yanzheng 6, New Technology Validation Satellite) to geotransfer orbit. My guess is XJS-6 was something similar to a DFH-5 communications satellite, of order 5 tonnes mass. The CZ-7A combines the earlier CZ-7 vehicle with a hydrogen/oxygen upper stage from the CZ-3 series. Nusantara Dua ------------- China suffered another launch failure on Apr 7, when a Chang Zheng 3B failed late in the first burn of the third stage and reentered over the Pacific near Guam and Saipan. The payload was Nusantara Dua (also called Palapa N1), a Chinese DFH-4E communications satellite for the Indonesian company PSNS (a consortium of Pasifik Satelit Nusantara and Indosat). The 5550 kg satellite was destroyed as a result of the failure. Glonass -------- Russia launched a Soyuz-2-1B from Plesetsk on Mar 16. The Fregat No. 112-11 upper stage put the Uragan-M No. 760 (codename Kosmos-2545) navigation satellite in orbit. The satellite will form part of the GLONASS system, probably replacing satellite no. 735. YG-30 ----- The sixth group of three Yaogan-30 satellites were launched on Mar 24. The YG-30 satellites are thought to be for signals intelligence. AEHF 6 ------ A United Launch Alliance Atlas V, flight AV-086, flew from Cape Canaveral on Mar 26, After the second Centaur burn, to geotransfer orbit, the TDO 2 tracking calibration satellite was ejected from the Centaur aft bulkhead. A further burn will raise perigee, putting the AEHF 6 communications satellite in transfer orbit for the US Space Force. Table of Recent Orbital Launches ---------------------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. Catalog Perigee Apogee Incl Notes Mar 7 0450 Dragon CRS-20 Falcon 9 Canaveral SLC40 Cargo 16A S45341 204 x 384 x 51.6 Mar 9 1155 Beidou DW 54 Chang Zheng 3B Xichang Nav 17A S45344 231 x 35775 x 28.4 Mar 16 1334 XJS 6 Chang Zheng 7A Wenchang LC201 Tech F02 F01450 -2000?x 200?x 20.0 Mar 16 1828 Kosmos-2545 Soyuz-2-1B/Fregat Plesetsk LC43/4 Nav 18A S45358 19131x 19155 x 64.8 Mar 18 1216 Starlink 1207 ) Falcon 9 Kennedy SLC39A Comms 19A 209 x 366 x 53.0 Starlink 1213 ) Starlink 1255-1260 ) Starlink 1262-1268 ) Starlink 1272-1293 ) Starlink 1295-1313 ) Starlink 1316-1319 ) Mar 21 1707 OneWeb 0018 ) Soyuz-2-1B/Fregat Baykonur Comms 20A S45424 433 x 463 x 87.4 OneWeb 0019 ) OneWeb 0027 ) OneWeb 0029 ) OneWeb 0031 ) OneWeb 0034 ) OneWeb 0037 ) OneWeb 0042 ) OneWeb 0046 ) OneWeb 0050 ) OneWeb 0055 ) OneWeb 0060 ) OneWeb 0061 ) OneWeb 0063 ) OneWeb 0064 ) OneWeb 0066-0069) OneWeb 0080-0082) OneWeb 0085-0088) OneWeb 0090 ) OneWeb 0092-0096) OneWeb 0098 ) Mar 24 0343 Yaogan-30 06 zu 01 xing ) Chang Zheng 2C Xichang Sigint 21A S45460 591 x 602 x 35.0 Yaogan-30 06 zu 02 xing ) Sigint 21B S45461 591 x 602 x 35.0 Yaogan-30 06 zu 03 xing ) Sigint 21C S45462 591 x 602 x 35.0 Mar 26 2018 AEHF 6 ) Atlas V 551 Canaveral SLC41 Comms 22B S4546 11366 x 35311 x 13.7 TDO 2 ) Calib 22A S45464 201 x 35459 x 26.5 Apr 9 0805 Soyuz MS-16 Soyuz-2-1a Baykonur LC31 Spaceship 23A S45476 217 x 389 x 51.8 Apr 9 1115 Nusantara Dua Chang Zheng 3B Xichang Comms F03 F01522 -1070?x 200?x 27.5? Table of Recent Suborbital Launches ----------------------------------- The Zulfiqar missile launched on Mar 28 by the Houthis in Yemen is a liquid propellant Scud-type vehicle similar to the Burkan, and is not related to Iran's solid fuel rocket of the same name. I am denoting it as Zulfiqar (YE) to maintain the distinction. Date UT Payload/Flt Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission Apogee/km Target Feb 12 USN RVs Trident D5LE USS Maine, Pacific Test 1000? Wake Island Feb 16 USN RVs Trident D5LE USS Maine, Pacific Test 1000? Wake Island Mar 20 0830 C-HGB STARS Kauai LC42 Test 500? Pacific Mar 28 2020? HE RV Zulfiqar (YE) Sadah? Weapon 150? Riyadh Apr 15 1500? Nudol' dummy KV? Nudol' Plesetsk Test 500? Laptev Sea .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | | | Somerville MA 02143 | inter : planet4589 at gmail | | USA | twitter: @planet4589 | | | | JSR: https://www.planet4589.org/jsr.html | | Back issues: https://www.planet4589.org/space/jsr/back | | Subscribe/unsub: https://www.planet4589.org/mailman/listinfo/jsr | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'