Jonathan's Space Report 1 Dec 1991 (no.97) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The STS-44 mission was cut short due to a failure in an IMU navigation unit. Atlantis landed at 2234.42 UT on Dec 1, on runway 5 at Edwards AFB. This is the first time that RW5 has been used by an Orbiter, although RW23 (i.e. the same runway used in the opposite direction) has been used eight times including the first Shuttle mission. This is the first time since 1985 that an Orbiter has made three flights in a single Gregorian calendar year. Atlantis has logged 1328 h 27 min in 10 flights (Columbia has 1804 h 23 m in 11 flights, Discovery has 1812 h 8 min in 13 flights). The next mission will be a Spacelab flight by Discovery in February. Story Musgrave, on his fourth shuttle mission, has accumulated 598 h 8 m in space, making him the most flight experienced mission specialist. Vance Brand is the only possibly active NASA astronaut with more flight hours (746 h 3m); I don't count Weitz and Young as active, since they have desk jobs now. The Mir/Kvant/Sofora/Kvant-2/Kristall/Soyuz TM-13/Progress M-10 complex continues in orbit with crew Aleksandr Volkov and Sergey Krikalyov. The crew will be replaced in March of 1992, barring further political upheavals. By that time both will be among the four humans with the most flight experience in space (the others are Manarov and Romanenko). So far Krikalyov has 196 days on this mission and 316 days total; Volkov has 59 days on this mission and 276 days total. 1991-78A, launched Nov 20 by Soyuz from Plesetsk, is Kosmos-2171. It is an imaging spy satellite with a two month lifetime. It is built by the KB Foton in Samara, Russia. I have no data yet on 1991-79A; it may be a classified satellite. If so, it is probably an advanced signals intelligence satellite of a type launched once a year by refurbished Titan II missiles (since all other launch pads used by classified US satellites are accounted for). 1991-80A was Atlantis, and 1991-80B is the DSP F16 satellite. Here is the complete list of DSP early warning satellites. They were all built by TRW and share the same basic design of a Schmidt telescope with a solid state IR array detector. There have been three generations of the spacecraft. DSP F1 was a partial launch failure, and DSP F7 failed on reaching stationary orbit. DSP Block 1 DSP F1 1970 Nov 6 1970-93A DSP F2 1971 May 5 1971-39A DSP F3 1972 Mar 1 1972-10A DSP F4 1973 Jun 12 1973-40A DSP Block 2 DSP F7 1975 Dec 14 1975-118A DSP F8 1976 Jun 26 1976-59A DSP F9 1977 Feb 6 1977-07A DSP F10 1979 Jun 10 1979-53A DSP F11 1981 Mar 16 1981-25A DSP F13 1982 Mar 6 1982-19A DSP F12 1984 Apr 14 1984-39A DSP F6R USA-7 1984 Dec 22 1984-129A DSP F5R USA-28 1987 Nov 28 1987-97A DSP Block 14 DSP F14 USA-39 1989 Jun 15 1989-46A DSP F15 USA-65 1990 Nov 13 1990-95A DSP F16 USA-74? 1991 Nov 25 1991-80B 1991-81A, launched Nov 27, is Kosmos-2172. It is a Tsikada class Soviet Navy navigation satellite in the same orbital plane as Kosmos-2100. The Tsikada satellites are probably built by NPO Yuzhnoye in the Ukraine. They are functional copies of the US Navy Transit series, and are launched by the Kosmos launch vehicle based on the R-14 IRBM. ___________________________________ |Current STS status: | |Orbiters | | | |OV-102 Columbia Palmdale | |OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 3 | |OV-104 Atlantis Edwards AFB | |OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 | | | |ML/ET/SRB stacks | | | |ML1 | |ML2 | |ML3?/STS-42 VAB Bay 1 | ----------------------------------- 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 | | | NASA Marshall Space Flight Center | | | Huntsville AL 35812 | inter : mcdowell@xanth.msfc.nasa.gov | | USA | | '-----------------------------------------------------------------------------'