Jonathan's Space Report No. 302 1996 Oct 29 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Mir --------------- Columbia is now on pad 39B awaiting the STS-80 launch, still scheduled for Nov 8 pending resolution of worries about the SRBs. Korzun, Kaleri and Blaha remain on Mir awaiting the Progress M cargo launch which has been delayed. Recent Launches --------------- A meteoroid travelling in solar orbit bounced off the Earth's atmosphere above New Mexico at 0200 UTC on Oct 4. It apparently entered a marginal Earth orbit and reentered over the Pacific and impacted in California almost one orbit later. NORAD numbers and international designations only get given to *artificial* satellites, and even then usually only to ones which make a complete orbit, so this natural object won't get in the satellite catalogs. China has launched an FSW-2 class recoverable satellite using a Chang Zheng 2D rocket from the Jiuquan space center. The satellite is in a 170 x 323 km orbit at 63.0 deg inclination with an orbital period of 89.45 minutes. The CZ-2D second stage is in a similar orbit. The FSW carries cameras for Earth photography, and will return a capsule to Earth. A Molniya-3 comsat, built by NPO Prikladnoi Mekhaniki for the Russian government, was launched into elliptical orbit on Oct 24 from Plesetsk. Launch time of Kosmos-2334 was 1247 UTC not 1347 UTC as I said earlier; there was a confusion about summer time. Launch of a Pegasus XL with the Argentine satellite SAC-B and the US HETE satellite is currently scheduled for Oct 30. Transit Symposium ----------------- On Oct 18, the Applied Physics Lab (APL) hosted a symposium on the Transit or Navy Navigation Satellite (NNS) system. Transit was one of the first operational satellite systems, and has provided 24-hour service since 1964, initially for Polaris submarines and more recently for civilian users. It is being superseded by the Navstar global positioning system. Individual satellites were remarkable for their longevity, many operating for over 10 years. Users measure the changing Doppler shift of the satellite's radio signal as it rises and sets, combined with knowledge of its orbit, to derive their position. The symposium participants recalled Transit's technical achievements including early work on orbiting frequency standards, gravity gradient stabilization, the use of radio-isotope thermoelectric generators (RTG), and on-board electronics to store the orbital ephemeris. The TRIAD satellite launched in 1972 to test improvements, used a remarkable device with a proof mass floating inside a cavity in the spacecraft to enable automatic correction for atmospheric drag. Small rocket motors fired to adjust the satellite's orbit to keep the floating mass in the middle of the cavity. Designers had to take into account the self-gravity of the TRIAD satellite itself! Although the navigation data stops being updated at the end of this year, the satellites will continue transmitting with NNS becoming NIMS, the Navy Ionospheric Monitoring System. Researchers monitor the distortion of the Transit radio signals by the ionosphere to derive maps of electron density versus height and position. The O-16 and O-17 satellites were modified for auroral and ionospheric research and were not part of the navigation system. Here is a summary of the Transit launches: Early Transit R&D sats: I-A 1959 Sep 17 Launch failure I-B 1960 Apr 13 II-A 1960 Jun 22 III-A 1960 Nov 30 Launch failure III-B 1961 Feb 22 Launch failure IV-A 1961 Jun 29 IV-B 1961 Nov 15 RTG power supply TRAAC 1961 Nov 15 Gravity gradient test Prototype Transit satellites: Transit-based research sats: VA-1 1962 Dec 19 VA-2 1963 Apr 6 Launch failure VA-3 1963 Jun 16 VBN-1 1963 Sep 28 RTG VE-1 1963 Sep 28 VBN-2 1963 Dec 5 RTG VE-3 1963 Dec 5 VBN-3 1964 Apr 21 RTG; Launch failure VE-2 1964 Apr 21 VC 1964 Jun 4 VE-4 1964 Oct 6 Operational Transits (`Oscars') O-1 1964 Oct 6 O-11 1977 Oct 28 O-2 1964 Dec 13 O-16 1983 Jun 27 Hilat experiment O-3 1965 Mar 11 O-24 1985 Aug 3 O-4 1965 Jun 24 O-30 1985 Aug 3 O-5 1965 Aug 13 O-17 1986 Nov 14 Polar Bear expt. O-6 1965 Dec 22 O-27 1987 Sep 16 O-7 1966 Jan 28 O-29 1987 Sep 16 O-8 1966 Mar 26 O-23 1988 Apr 26 O-9 1966 May 19 O-32 1988 Apr 26 O-10 1966 Aug 18 O-25 1988 Aug 25 O-12 1967 Apr 14 O-31 1988 Aug 25 O-13 1967 May 18 O-14 1967 Sep 25 Improved Transits and Nova O-18 1968 Mar 2 O-19 1970 Aug 27 TRIAD 1972 Sep 2 Nova 1 1981 May 15 O-20 1973 Oct 30 TIP 2 1975 Oct 12 Nova 3 1984 Oct 12 TIP 3 1976 Sep 1 Nova 2 1988 Jun 16 Table of Recent Launches ------------------------ Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Sep 4 0901 Kosmos-2333 Zenit-2 Baykonur LC45L Sigint 51A Sep 5 1247 Kosmos-2334 ) Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC132/1 Navsat 52A UNAMSat ) 52B Sep 6 1737 Inmarsat III F2 Proton Baykonur LC81 Comsat 53A Sep 8 2149 GE-1 Atlas IIA Canaveral LC36B Comsat 54A Sep 11 0000 Echostar II Ariane 42P Kourou ELA2 Comsat 55A Sep 12 0849 Navstar 30 Delta 7925 Canaveral LC17A Navsat 56A Sep 16 0855 Atlantis Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 57A Sep 26 1751 Ekspress Proton-K Baykonur Comsat 58A Oct 20 0730? FSW-2 Chang Zheng 2D Jiuquan Remote sen. 59A Oct 24 1137 Molniya-3 Molniya-M Plesetsk Comsat 60A Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia LC39B STS-80 Nov 8 OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-82 Feb 13 OV-104 Atlantis OPF Bay 3 STS-81 Jan 12 OV-105 Endeavour Palmdale OMDP ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/ ML2/RSRM-54 VAB Bay 1 STS-81 ML3/RSRM-49/ET-80/OV-102 LC39B STS-80 .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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.* | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'