Jonathan's Space Report No. 259 1995 Oct 9 Cambridge, MA -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle ------- The next launch attempt for Columbia/STS-73 will be no earlier than Oct 14. The Oct 5 schedule was slipped a day due to Hurricane Opal and then scrubbed on Oct 6 prior to the start of fuelling because of problems with the Orbiter landing gear. The Oct 7 attempt was scrubbed at the T-20min mark due to failure of one of the Master Events Controller avionics boxes. Meanwhile, Atlantis was rolled to the VAB on Oct 3 for connection to the STS-74 stack. Discovery was ferried to Palmdale by the NASA 905 SCA aircraft. It arrived in Palmdale on Sep 28 after stopping at Fort Worth Naval Air Station and Salt Lake City. (Thanks to Ed Dietz for info). It will remain at the Rockwell plant for refurbishment until its next mission in 1997. Mir ---- The Progress M-29 cargo ship (factory serial number 229) was launched successfully from pad 1 at Baykonur on Oct 8 at 1850:40 UTC. According to V. Agapov, it was inserted into a 194 x 242 km x 51.7 deg orbit. Progress M-29 will dock at the rear of the Kvant module; Soyuz TM-22 is docked to the front port of the Mir transfer module. The EO-20 crew of Gidzenko, Avdeev and Reiter had been in space for 36 days as of Oct 9. Recent Launches -------------- Kosmos-2321 was launched at 0323 UTC on Oct 6 from Plesetsk by a Kosmos-3M launch vehicle into a 95.13 minute, 246 x 802 km x 82.9 deg orbit. The spacecraft is probably a radar calibration satellite, which are launched on Kosmos-3M rockets into low elliptical orbits, although this particular orbit has not been used before. Another, less likely, possibility is that it was a Parus navigation satellite intended for a 1000 km circular orbit but which suffered an upper stage failure; Phil Clark has also suggested this as an interpretation, and reports that the orbital plane is the same as Kosmos-2266. Kosmos-2320 raised its orbit to 239 x 300 km x 64.9 deg by Oct 1. The orbit indicates it is a member of the Kosmos-1426 group of long-lived recon satellites. The other member of the group in orbit is Kosmos-2305, launched in Dec 1994 and currently in a 229 x 281 km x 64.9 deg orbit. The other types of imaging recon satellite currently in use by the Russian Ministry of Defence are the Yantar'-class vehicle, most recently flown as Kosmos-2311 and Kosmos-2314, with two month lifetimes and lower perigees, and the new Kosmos-2290 class satellite launched on Zenit vehicles. Kosmos-2290 flew for a year in Apr 1994-Apr 1995 and has not yet been replaced. AT&T's Telstar 402R reached geostationary altitude by Sep 27 and arrived on station at 89.1W around Oct 3. Other recent geostationary launches: JCSAT 3 is at 127.5E, N-Star a is at 131.9E. Kosmos-2319 is at 79.8E, probably replacing Kosmos-2291 which has moved from its 80 deg E location and is drifting west at 2 deg per day. PAS 4 is at 68.5E on station; Space Command data released in September showing it drifting were erroneous. Table of Recent Launches ------------------------ Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Sep 3 0900 Soyuz TM-22 Soyuz-U2 Baykonur LC1 Spaceship 47A Sep 7 1509 Endeavour Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 48A Sep 8 1543 Spartan-201 OV-105, LEO Astronomy 48B Sep 11 1125 WSF 2 OV-105, LEO Micrograv. 48C Sep 24 0006 Telstar 402R Ariane 4 Kourou ELA2 Comsat 49A Sep 26 1120 Resurs-F Soyuz-U Plesetsk LC43-4 Rem.sensing 50A Sep 29 0425 Kosmos-2320 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC31 Recon 51A Oct 6 0323 Kosmos-2321 Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC132 ? 52A Oct 8 1851 Progress M-29 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo Reentries --------- Sep 4 Progress M-28 Deorbited Sep 6 Kosmos-2314 Deorbited Sep 11 Soyuz TM-21 Landed in Kazakhstan Sep 18 Endeavour Landed at KSC Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia LC39B STS-73 Oct 14 OV-103 Discovery Palmdale OMDP OV-104 Atlantis VAB Bay 1 STS-74 Nov OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 3 STS-72 Jan 11 ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/ ML2/RSRM-51/ET-74/OV-104 VAB Bay 1 STS-74 ML3/RSRM-50/ET-73/OV-102 LC39B STS-73 .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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/space/jsr/jsr.html | | ftp://sao-ftp.harvard.edu/pub/jcm/space/news/news.* | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'