Jonathan's Space Report

15 Sep 1991 (no.87)
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Space Shuttle Discovery was launched on Sep 12 at 2311 UTC.  It carried
the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite into orbit.  Deployment occurred
on 15 Sep at 0423.  Crew are J.O Creighton, Kenneth Reightler, Sam Gemar, Jim
Buchli, and Mark Brown.  Gemar is the first astronaut of the 1985 group
to make a second flight; four of his classmates have yet to fly at all
(mission specialists get more opportunities than pilots).  Buchli is the
first Shuttle generation (1978 group and later) astronaut to make four
flights, although Brewster Shaw and Guion Bluford will still have more
flight hours. 

Trivia corner: Astronauts with lots of flights.  There are 11 people who
have made four or more spaceflights (counting space as starting at 80 km
altitude).  John Young holds the record at six; Vladimir Dzhanibekov has
five, and so does Joe Engle.  Those with four are Charles Conrad, James
Lovell, Tom Stafford, Bob Crippen, Vance Brand, Jim Buchli, Oleg Makarov
and Gennadiy Strekalov.  Of these, only Buchli and Strekalov are likely
to make further flights, although I believe that Brand and Young are
still nominally on the active list. 


Anatoliy Artsebarksiy and Sergey Krikalyov continue in orbit aboard the
Mir/Kvant/Sofora/Kvant-2/Kristall/Soyuz TM-12/Progress M-9 complex.  

India's IRS-1B remote sensing satellite was launched by a commercial
Vostok booster from Kosmodrom Baykonur on Aug 29 into polar orbit. 

A Kosmos electronic intelligence satellite was lost on Aug 30 at
Kosmodrom Baykonur when its Zenit launch vehicle was destroyed during
launch.  This is the second Zenit failure in a row. 

___________________________________
|Current STS status:              |
|Orbiters                         |
|                                 |
|OV-102 Columbia        Palmdale  |
|OV-103 Discovery       LEO       |
|OV-104 Atlantis        OPF Bay 2 |
|OV-105 Endeavour       OPF Bay 1 |
|                                 |
|ML/ET/SRB stacks                 |
|                                 |
|ML1/STS-44             VAB Bay 3 |
|ML2                              |
|ML3                    LC39A     |
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N.B.  Information in this report is obtained from public sources and
does not reflect the official views of NASA. 

 .-----------------------------------------------------------------------------.
 |  Jonathan McDowell                 |  phone : (205)544-7724                 |
 |  Space Science Lab ES65            | uucp:                                  |
 |  NASA Marshall Space Flight Center | bitnet :                               |
 |  Huntsville AL 35812               |  inter : mcdowell@xanth.msfc.nasa.gov  |
 |  USA                               |                                        |
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