Jonathan's Space Report No. 240 1995 May 15 Cambridge, MA -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle ------- Discovery was rolled out to pad 39B on May 11, joining Atlantis which has been on pad 39A for two weeks. Launch of Discovery is scheduled for Jun 8. Crew are Col. Tom Henricks, USAF (Commander); Kevin Kregel (Pilot); and mission specialists Maj. Nancy Currie, US Army, Dr. Donald Thomas, and Dr. Mary Weber. Kregel and Weber are making their first flights. For those pedants who keep track: Nancy Currie, born Nancy Decker, was called Nancy Sherlock at the time of her previous mission - I think this is the first time someone has flown twice under different names. Trivia question: Who was the first person to fly in space using a surname other than the one they were born with? There have been eight by my count, not including Christa Corrigan who didn't reach orbit. Bonus question for Mike C. and Jim O. - list the eight by birth surname. Discovery's mission is STS-70. The only major cargo bay payload is the TDRS-G communications satellite with an IUS upper stage, mounted on an IUS tilt table in the cargo bay. Mir --- EO-18 cosmonauts Vladimir Dezhurov and Gennadiy Strekalov carried out their first spacewalk on May 12, starting at 0420 UT. The cosmonauts used the airlock on the Kvant-2 module, and the EVA lasted 6 hr 8 min. The purpose of the spacewalk was to prepare for removal of the Kristall solar arrays and their transfer to the Kvant module. Recent Launches -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A classified US satellite was launched at 1345 UT on May 14 from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Station by Titan Centaur TC-17. The Titan 401 model core stage was serial no. K-23. In the past, classified Titan 401 missions have orbited geostationary and highly elliptical orbit signals intelligence satellites. I don't have any details yet on the current mission. Geostationary satellite movements --------------------------------- Intelsat 507 has arrived at its new station of 47.1E. Between Apr 28 and May 5 Intelsat 705 moved from its 56W testing location to a new station of 50.0W. Table of Recent Launches ------------------------ Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Apr 3 1348 Orbcomm 1 ) Pegasus/L1011 VAFB/PAWA Comsat 17A Orbcomm 2 ) Comsat 17B Microlab 1 ) Science 17C Apr 5 1116 'Ofeq-3 Shaviyt Palamchim Technol. 18A Apr 7 2347 AMSC-1 Atlas IIA Canaveral LC36A Comsat 19A Apr 9 1934 Progress M-27 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 20A Apr 19 1912 GFZ-1 - Mir Geodesy 8617JE Apr 21 0144 ERS-2 Ariane 40 Kourou ELA2 Rem Sensing 21A May 14 1345 USA 110? Titan 4 Centaur Canaveral LC40 Sigint? Reentries --------- Apr 3 Kosmos-2137 Reentered Apr 4 Kosmos-2290 Deorbited over Pacific Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-73 Sep 21 OV-103 Discovery LC39B STS-70 Jun 8 OV-104 Atlantis LC39A STS-71 Jun 22-24? Under review OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-69 Jul 20 ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/ ML2/RSRM-44/ET-71/OV-103 LC39B STS-70 ML3/RSRM-45/ET-70/OV-104 LC39A STS-71 .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS4 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@urania.harvard.edu | | USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/QEDT/jcm/jsr.html | ! ftp://sao-ftp.harvard.edu/pub/jcm/space/news/news.* | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'