Jonathan's Space Report No. 269 1995 Dec 24 Cambridge, MA -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle ------- The next Shuttle mission is STS-72, still scheduled for January 11. Crew of Endeavour will be Brian Duffy, Brent Jett, Leroy Chiao, Winston Scott, Koichi Wakata, and Daniel Barry. Wakata is an astronaut from Japan's NASDA space agency, while the others are from NASA. Mir --- RKK Energiya's 7K-TGM transport craft 11F615A55 No. 230 was launched on Dec 18 from pad 1 at Baykonur and named Progress M-30. Launch was at 1431:35 UTC and it entered an orbit of 89.61 min, 194 x 315 km x 51.6 deg. After correction burns at 1810 and 1904 UTC it was in a 89.90 min, 240 x 298 km x 51.6 deg orbit. (Times are from Vladimir Agapov; orbital data is based on Space Command elements). On Dec 19 at 0915:05 UTC, transport ship No. 229 (Progress M-29) undocked from the rear port of Mir, on the Kvant module, into a 92.47 min, 391 x 400 km x 51.6 deg orbit. and at 1526 UTC it fired its engine to reenter over the Pacific Ocean. Half an hour later, at 1600 UTC, Progress M-30 raised its orbit to 90.13 min, 248 x 312 km x 51.6 deg. At 1615 UTC Progress M-29 burnt up over 48.5 deg S, 158.7 deg W. Progress M-30 made two more manouvres at 1404 and 1447 UTC on Dec 20, entering a 92.46 min, 390 x 399 km x 41.6 deg orbit and completing its rendezvous with Mir. It docked to the vacant port at 1610:15 UTC on Dec 20, delivering cargo to the Mir crew of Gidzenko, Avdeev and Reiter. The Progress M (11F615A55) series of spacecraft consist of a cargo module, a fuel section, and a service module. They are based on the Soyuz (7K) spaceship design. 73 robot cargo ships in the Progress and Progress M series have now been launched towards the DOS-5, 6 and 7 (Salyut-6, Salyut-7 and Mir) space stations; every single one has successfully delivered its cargo, although several of the Progress M ferries had to make more than one attempt at docking. Recent Launches -------------- Kosmos-2326 was launched on Dec 20. It is an electronic intelligence ocean reconnaissance satellite built by KB Arsenal for the Russian Defense Ministry, and uses a low thrust engine to maintain its 400 km high, 65 degree orbit. Kosmos-2326 also carries a supplementary scientific experiment from the Ioffe Institute in St Petersburg, according to V. Agapov. The experiment is the Konus-A gamma ray spectrometer, used to detect cosmic gamma ray bursts. Konus-A is a successor to earlier Konus experiments carried on Venera probes in the 1970s and 1980s. Launch of Delta 230 with the X-ray Timing Explorer satellite was scrubbed on Dec 18 at 1501 UTC when the liquid oxygen valve on the first stage failed to open and the main engine did not ignite. The vernier engines ignited briefly but the solids were not commanded to ignite and the vehicle remained safely on the pad. The Russian spy satellite Kosmos-2305 may have completed its mission and been deorbited around 0h UTC on Dec 19. Two new objects were tracked in orbit around that time. Orbit of Kosmos-2305 on Dec 18 was 89.77 min, 239 x 286 km x 64.9 deg. Kosmos-2305 was launched in Dec 1994; its companion spacecraft Kosmos-2320 remains in a similar orbit. Table of Recent Launches ------------------------ Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Nov 4 1422 Radarsat ) Delta 7920 Vandenberg SLC2 Rem sensing 59A SURFSAT ) 59B Nov 6 0515 Milstar DFS 2 Titan 4 Centaur Canaveral LC40 Comsat 60A Nov 12 1230 Atlantis ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 61A Docking Module ) Nov 17 0120 ISO Ariane 44P Kourou ELA2 Astronomy 62A Nov 17 1425 Gals-2 Proton-K/DM2 Baykonur LC200L Comsat 63A Nov 28 1130 Asiasat 2 Chang Zheng 2E Xichang Comsat 64A Dec 2 0808 SOHO Atlas IIAS Canaveral LC36B Astronomy 65A Dec 5 2118 USA 116 Titan 4 Vandenberg SLC4E Recon 66A Dec 6 2323 Telecom 2C ) Ariane 44L Kourou ELA2 Comsat 67A Insat 2C ) Comsat 67B Dec 14 0610 Kosmos-2323 ) Navsat 68A Kosmos-2324 ) Proton-K/DM2 Baykonur LC200L Navsat 68B Kosmos-2325 ) Navsat 68C Dec 15 0023 Galaxy IIIR Atlas IIA Canaveral LC36A Comsat 69A Dec 18 1431 Progress M-30 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo ship 70A Dec 20 0052 Kosmos-2326 Tsiklon-2 Baykonur LC90 Eorsat/Sci 71A Payloads no longer in orbit -------------------------- Nov 5 Columbia Landed at KSC Nov 18 Molniya-1 (80-92A) Reentered Nov 20 Atlantis Landed at KSC Dec 7 Galileo Probe Entered Jovian atmosphere Dec 11 Kosmos-398 Reentered over Pacific Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 2 STS-75 Feb 22 OV-103 Discovery Palmdale OMDP OV-104 Atlantis OPF Bay 1 STS-76 Mar 21 OV-105 Endeavour LC39B STS-72 Jan 11 ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/RSRM-52/ET-75/OV-105 LC39B STS-72 ML2/ ML3/RSRM-53 VAB Bay 1 STS-75 Shuttle Processing Explanation (or, what are all these acronyms anyway?): The Shuttle consists of an Orbiter (OV), an expendable External Tank (ET), and a reusable pair of Redesigned Solid Rocket Motors (RSRM). The OV is prepared for flight in the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) which consists of three bays (one of which is actually a separate building) after which it is towed to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and `mated to the stack' or joined to the ET and RSRM. First, the segments of the RSRM are stacked up on a Mobile Launch Platform (ML) and then the ET is connected to it. After the OV is mated, a Crawler-Transporter is moved underneath the ML and carries the ML/RSRM/ET/OV stack to one of the two pads (A or B) at launch complex 39 (LC39) where it is eventually launched on a Space Transportation System (STS) mission. Occasionally an OV is returned to the Rockwell International plant in Palmdale, California for refit - an Orbiter Maintenance Down Period or OMDP. .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | | ftp://sao-ftp.harvard.edu/pub/jcm/space/news/news.* | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'