Jonathan's Space Report No. 103 10 Feb 1992 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Columbia was returned to the Kennedy Space Center on Feb 9 after being refurbished in California. With the return of Discovery to the Cape next week, all four orbiters will be at KSC. Progress M-11 is docked to the Mir/Kvant/Kvant-2/Kristall/Sofora/Soyuz TM-13 complex. Progress M-11 was deorbited on Jan 20; no word yet on whether an experiment capsule was recovered from it. Kosmos-2176 was launched on Jan 24 by a Molniya rocket from Plesetsk. It is an early warning satellite. These satellites were formerly operated by the PVO (Soviet Air Defense Command). I understand they form part of the strategic assets which according to Rossiya will be part of the Commonwealth combined command. Three GLONASS navigation satellites, Kosmos-2177 to Kosmos-2179, were launched from Baykonur in Kazakhstan by a Russian Proton rocket on Jan 30. They are the Russian equivalent of the Navstar satellites. Kosmos-2174, a mapping survey satellite, landed on Jan 30 after a 44 day misson. The only imaging satellites Russia has left in orbit are Kosmos-2175 ,launched last month on a two month mission, and Kosmos-2152, launched in July last year. The latter satellite is of a type which has demonstrated 260 day lifetimes, so it could stay in orbit until April. The old Vostok-based two-week imaging missions seem finally to have been phased out in the middle of last year; all imaging missions since then have been of the more advanced type introduced in 1975 which last over a month in orbit. All seven DARPA Microsats (launched by Pegasus last year) reentered between Jan 23 and Jan 26. Also down, on Jan 19, is Kosmos-604, an electronic intelligence satellite launched in 1973. Launches in January: 01 Kosmos-2175 02 Discovery STS-42 03 Kosmos-2176 04 Progress M-11 05 Kosmos-2177/Kosmos-2178/Kosmos-2179 Note that despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, most launches are still carried out from Rossiya and Kazakhstan. ___________________________________ |Current STS status: | |Orbiters | | | |OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 | |OV-103 Discovery EAFB | |OV-104 Atlantis OPF Bay 2 | |OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 | | | |ML/ET/SRB stacks | | | |ML1?/STS-45/ET VAB | |ML2?/STS-49 VAB | |ML3 VAB | ----------------------------------- .-----------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS4 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : mcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | USA | | '-----------------------------------------------------------------------------'