Jonathan's Space Report No. 104 18 Feb 1992 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Ulysses spaceprobe flew past Jupiter on Feb 8, with closes approach at 1202 UT. It is now in a solar orbit with a perihelion of 1.5 AU, an aphelion of 5.0 AU, and an inclination of 80 degrees. The previous inclination record for a spacecraft in a bound heliocentric orbit was 15 degrees for the Pioneer-Saturn spacecraft between 1975 and 1979. Atlantis has been moved to the VAB and mated to the STS-45 stack in preparation for next month's Spacelab Atlas-1 mission. Columbia was returned to the Kennedy Space Center on Feb 9 after being refurbished in California. With the return of Discovery to the Cape on Feb 16, all four orbiters are at KSC. Aleksandr Volkov and Sergey Krikalyov remain in orbit aboard the Mir complex. According to the latest Spacewarn Bulletin, the VBS reentry capsule from Progress M-11 was successfully recovered. The USAF's DSCS III F-5 comsat was launched on Feb 11 by the second Atlas II Centaur (AC101) from complex 36A at Cape Canaveral. The DSCS III satellites are built by GE Astro Space; previous ones were put into stationary orbit by IUS upper stages, two at a time. From now on they will be orbited one at a time with Atlas Centaur. This requires an extra apogee kick stage, the IABS or Integrated Apogee Boost Motor, also provided by GE. The DSCS satellites use X-band frequencies (8/7 GHz). DSCS III launch history: Launch date Vehicle Int'l designation DSCS III F-1 1982 Oct 30 Titan 34D-1/IUS 1982-106B DSCS III F-2 USA-11 1985 Oct 3 STS-28[51-J]/IUS 1985-92B DSCS III F-3 USA-12 1985 Oct 3 STS-28[51-J]/IUS 1985-92C DSCS III F-4 USA-44 1989 Sep 4 Titan 34D-2/Transtage 1989-69B DSCS III F-5 USA-78 1992 Feb 11 Atlas Centaur AC-101/IABS 1992-06A A two stage version of Japan's Thor-based H-I launch vehicle was launched on Feb 12 at 0150 from Tanegashima Space Center. It placed into orbit the NASDA satellite "Fuyo-1", formerly Earth Resources Satellite ERS-1. It carries a synthetic aperture radar and visible light imagers. The NASDA ERS-1 is not to be confused with ESA's ERS-1, or with the USAF ERS lightsat program of the early 1960's. NASDA is one of Japan's two space agencies, devoted to space applications. Space science is carried out by the other agency, ISAS. Early reports indicate the SAR on Fuyo-1 has failed to deploy. ___________________________________ |Current STS status: | |Orbiters | | | |OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 | |OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 | |OV-104 Atlantis VAB Bay 3 | |OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 | | | |ML/ET/SRB stacks | | | |ML1?/STS-45/ET/OV-104 VAB Bay 3 | |ML2?/STS-49/ET 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 | | '-----------------------------------------------------------------------------'