Jonathan's Space Report No. 113 1992 May 5 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Space Shuttle OV-105 Endeavour is due for its first flight on 1992 May 7 at 2306 UT. The third Titan 23G launch vehicle (a refurbished Titan II ICBM) was launched at 0853 UT on Apr 25 from Space Launch Complex 4-West at Vandenberg AFB, California. The mission is classified; the fact that in contravention of its international treaty obligations the previous launch in the series was not reported by the US government to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space suggests that the payload is probably a highly secret NSA electronic intelligence satellite, most likely a successor to the Jumpseat series. A Resurs-F remote sensing satellite was launched from the Russian spaceport Plesetsk on Apr 29 by a Soyuz launch vehicle. The Resurs-F spacecraft is based on KB Foton's Vostok bus and carries mapping cameras. It is operated by the Priroda ('Nature') center of the Russian Central Geodesy and Cartography Agency (GUGK). Russian President Boris Yel'tsin attended the launch. Another GUGK spacecraft was launched by Soyuz from Baykonur on Apr 29; the Kosmos-2185 mapping satellite is in a 70 degree orbit. Russian cosmonauts Aleksander Viktorenko and Aleksandr Kaleri on board the Mir complex have unloaded the Progress M-12 cargo transport and are carrying out materials processing experiments. ____________________________________________ |Current STS status: | |Orbiters Location Mission | | | |OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-50 | |OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 Mod | |OV-104 Atlantis OPF Bay 1 STS-46 | |OV-105 Endeavour LC39B STS-49 | | | |ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks | | | |ML1/STS-46 VAB Bay 1 | |ML2/STS-49/ET/OV-105 LC39B | |ML3/STS-50/ET VAB Bay 3 | -------------------------------------------- .-----------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS4 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : mcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | USA | | '-----------------------------------------------------------------------------'