Jonathan's Space Report No. 296 1996 Aug 19 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Mir --------------- Soyuz TM-24 was launched at 1318:03 UTC on Aug 17 from Kosmodrom Baykonur in Kazakstan. It carries the EO-24 crew of Valeriy Korzun and Aleksandr Kaleri of the Russian Space Agency (RKA) and Claudie Andre-Deshays of the French space agency CNES. The crew callsign is `Fregat'. They are scheduled to dock with the Mir station on Aug 19. Aboard Mir are Yuri Onufrienko, Yuri Usachyov and Shannon Lucid. This launch was the first Soyuz-U with a crew aboard since the recent launch failures. Onufrienko, Usachyov and Andre-Deshays will return to Earth in Soyuz TM-23 on Sep 2, leaving Korzun, Kaleri and Lucid on the station. The Progress M-32 cargo craft undocked from Mir on Aug 18 at 0934 UTC in order to free up a docking port. It will remain in orbit and will redock with Mir on Sep 3. Atlantis is due to be rolled out to the pad on Aug 20. Meanwhile, they have probably destacked the old external tank and SRBs, but I haven't seen any report on this yet. Launch remains scheduled for Sep 12. Recent Launches --------------- The Russian Military Space Forces (VKS) launched a Molniya-1T comsat from 1-y GIK at Plesetsk on Aug 14 into an elliptical 12 hour orbit. The spacecraft first entered a low parking orbit of 207 x 438 km x 62.8 degrees. The Blok-ML upper stage ignited over South America to raise the orbit to 450 x 40800 km. The sun angle made the rocket plume widely visible, causing a flurry of UFO reports in Chile where the alien-invasion movie Independence Day has just opened. There are two classes of Molniya satellite, the Molniya-1T used mainly for Russian government communications and the Molniya-3 used for TV signal relay across Russia. The last Molniya-1T was launched in Dec 1994 and the last Molniya-3 in Aug 1995. Since 1993 Molniya-3 satellites have been launched once each year in August, so it's a little suprising that this August's launch is a Molniya-1T. The Molniya satellites are built by NPO Prikladnoi Mekhaniki of Krasnoyarsk. The first Molniya satellite (built by the old OKB-1 Korolev bureau) was launched in 1964. Japan's NASDA space agency launched the ADEOS Advanced Earth Observing Satellite on Aug 17 using a large H-II launch vehicle. The third Japanese amateur satellite, JAS-2, was also orbited. ADEOS will probably be given a new name now it is on orbit. ADEOS has a set of instruments including the Advanced Visible/Near IR Radiometer and the Ocean Color and Temperature Scanner, the NASA TOMS ozone monitor and NSCAT wind speed scatterometer, and an experiment to study greenhouse effect gases. This was the fourth H-II launch. H-II launches from Tanegashima Space Center, Yoshinobu Launch Complex: Flight Date Payload Upper Stage Fairing Type H-II-1F 1994 Feb 3 VEP Myojo Dummy LAPS 4S OREX Ryusei H-II-2F 1994 Aug 28 ETS-6 Kiku-6 LAPS 4S H-II-3F 1995 Mar 17 SFU None 4/5D GMS-5 Himawari-5 H-II-4F 1995 Aug 17 ADEOS None 5S JAS-2 China launched a Chang Zheng 3 vehicle on Aug 18 from Xichang. The CZ-3 third stage entered parking orbit and coasted, and then reignited for a second burn to geostationary transfer orbit. However, the engine shut down prematurely during this second burn, leaving the payload in a low orbit. The payload is Zhongxing 7, a Hughes HS-376 class comsat for the China Telecommunication and Broadcasting Satellite Corporation. Launch was at 1827 Beijing time which I believe to be 1027 UTC. The Aug 18 planned launch of NASA's FAST satellite aboard a Pegasus was postponed ten minutes before the expected drop time, and the L-1011 carrier plane returned to Vandenberg with the rocket still aboard. Plesetsk History ---------------- There are officially two separate spaceports at Plesetsk in northern Russia. Thanks to recent conversations with Igor Lissov and Maxim Tarasenko, I've understood the history of this a little better and though I would share it with you all. Orbital launches from Plesetsk began in 1966. Until 1993 the spaceport's true name was NIIP-53 (53-y Nauchno-Issledovatelskiy Ispytatelnyy Poligon, 53rd Scientific Research Test Range). Sometime in 1993 the name was changed to GNIIP (Gosudarstvennyy Nauchno-Issledovatelskiy Ispytatelnyy Poligon, State Scientific Research Test Range). The NIIP-53/GNIIP base is run by the RVSN (Strategic Rocket Forces), but in 1982 operation of the orbital pads was transferred to the UNKS space troops, and in 1989 the UNKS units at Plesetsk were designated the 1278-y GTsIPKS (1278-y Glavnyy Tsentr Ispytaniy i Primeneniya Kosmicheskikh Sredtsv). In Aug 1992 the UNKS became the VKS (Military Space Forces of the Russian Federation). Then, on 1994 Nov 11 the part of GNIIP operated by the VKS, including the GTsIPKS headquarters and the orbital launch pads, was split off into a separate spaceport, the 1-y GIK (1-y Gosudarstvennyy Ispytatelnyy Kosmodrom, First State Test Spaceport). GNIIP remains in existence alongside 1-y GIK, but is used by the RVSN for ballistic missile tests. All space launches since Nov 1994 have been from 1-y GIK by the VKS, with the exception of the 1995 Start launch which was from GNIIP and was carried out by the RVSN. This situation (two spaceports right next to each other) is not unprecedented. From 1959 to 1964 space launches were made from a Navy base, NMFPA (Naval Missile Facility, Point Arguello) right next to the USAF base VAFB (Vandenberg Air Force Base). In 1965 NMFPA became part of Vandenberg AFB. Many histories list the earlier launches as being from `Vandenberg', but this is technically not correct. (And while I'm on a nitpick binge, PLEASE don't spell it Vandenburg with a U!). Similarly, the NASA John F. Kennedy Space Center (with pads 39A and 39B) is next door to the USAF Cape Canaveral Air Station (with pads 17, 36, 40/41, etc.). In the launch tables in this newsletter, I will continue to use `Plesetsk' to refer to 1-y GIK, while future launches of the Start will be labelled as being from `GNIIP'. The Kazak spaceport Baykonur was designated NIIP-5 until 1989; since then it has had another designation, possibly 5-y GIK but I'm not sure - anyone who knows, please tell me. The Volgograd station at Kapustin Yar was designated GTsP4. Table of Recent Launches ------------------------ Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Jul 2 0748 TOMS-EP Pegasus XL Vandenberg Rem.sens. 37A Jul 3 0031 USA 125 Titan 404 Canaveral LC40 Comsat? 38A Jul 3 1047 Apstar 1A Chang Zheng 3 Xichang Comsat 39A Jul 9 2224 Arabsat 2A ) Ariane 44L Kourou ELA2 Comsat 40A Turksat 1C ) Comsat 40B Jul 16 0050 Navstar SVN 40 Delta 7925 Canaveral LC17B Navsat 41A Jul 25 1242 UHF F7 Atlas 2 Canaveral LC36A Comsat 42A Jul 31 2006 Progress M-23 Soyuz-U Baykonur Cargo 43A Aug 8 2249 Italsat F2 ) Ariane 44L Kourou ELA2 Comsat 44A Telecom 2D ) Comsat 44B Aug 14 2221 Molniya-1T Molniya-M Plesetsk Comsat 45A Aug 17 0129 ADEOS ) H-II Tanegashima Y Rem.sens. JAS-2 ) Comsat Aug 17 1318 Soyuz TM-24 Soyuz-U Baykonur Spaceship Aug 18 1027 Zhongxing 7 Chang Zheng 3 Xichang Comsat Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 1 STS-80 Oct 31 OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-82 Feb 13 OV-104 Atlantis VAB Bay 3 STS-79 Sep 12 OV-105 Endeavour Palmdale OMDP ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/RSRM-56/ET-81/OV-104 VAB Bay 3 STS-79 (new) ML2/RSRM-54/ET-80 VAB Bay 1 STS-79 (old) ML3/ .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS6 | | | 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 | | Back issues: ftp://sao-ftp.harvard.edu/pub/jcm/space/news/news.* | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'