Jonathan's Space Report No. 476 2002 Apr 9 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Station -------------------- Space Shuttle Atlantis was launched at 2044 UTC on Apr 8. It entered an orbit of approximately 59 x 229 km x 51.6 deg at 2052 UTC, and separated from the External Tank, ET-114. ET-114 reached apogee around 2122 UTC and reentered over the Pacific about 2150 UTC at the end of its first orbit. Atlantis fired its OMS engines at apogee to raise its perigee to 155 km. Further orbit changes will lead to a rendezvous with the Space Station. Atlantis (orbiter OV-104) is flying Shuttle mission STS-110, Station mission 8A, which will deliver the S0 truss to Station. S0 will be attached to the Destiny lab module. Recent Launches --------------- China's Shenzhou 3 descent module returned to Earth on Apr 1 at 0851 UTC, landing in Nei Monggol Zizhiqu (Inner Mongolia). The orbital module separated earlier on Apr 1 and remains in orbit carrying out experiments; the propulsion module carried out the deorbit burn and then separated to burn up in reentry. An Arianespace Ariane 44L rocketed into space from Kourou on Mar 29, launching JCSAT 8 and Astra 3A. The Ariane high energy third stage reached geostationary transfer orbit. JCSAT 8 separated, followed by the Mini-Spelda adapter, followed by Astra 3A. JCSAT 8 is a Boeing BSS-601 with a launch mass of 2600 kg and a dry mass around 1200 kg. It's one of the lowest mass BSS-601 satelites in recent years, and will be used by Japan Satellite to replace JCSAT 2. Astra 3A is a Boeing BSS-376HP, a smaller satellite wih a mass of 1495 kg full and about 750 kg empty. It will join Luxembourg-based SES Astra's fleet. The 376 model has been in use since 1980 and only one other, also in the Astra series, has been launched in the past three years. International Launch Services carried out the launch of a Krunichev Proton-K with an Energiya Blok DM3 upper stage on Mar 30 at 1725 UTC. The three stage Proton put the DM3 and payload on a suborbital trajectory. The first DM3 burn reached a circular 160 km orbit at 1742 UTC. The second burn at 1838 UTC raised apogee to about 35800 km, and a third burn near apogee at 2339 UTC raised perigee to about 3500 km and lowered inclination to 25 deg. Blok DM3 separated from the Intelsat 903 payload at 0008 UTC on Mar 31. By Apr 5, Intelsat 903 was in a 31653 x 35817 km x 0.7 deg near-synchronous orbit. Intelsat 903 has a launch mass of 4726 kg and a dry mass around 2350 kg, and carries C and Ku band antennas. It was built by SS/Loral using a derivative of the FS-1300 platform. Kosmos-2388 was launched on Apr 1 by Molniya-M from area 16, pad 2 at Plesetsk (thanks to Alex Zheleznyakov for pad info). It is a US-KS (Oko) elliptical orbit early warning satellite built by Lavochkin. The launch was reported as successful, but GSFC had still not posted any Space Command element sets by Apr 8 for the elliptical orbit (although the Blok-I rocket and BOZ ullage system left in low orbit have now been cataloged.) It's very unusual for this kind of satellite not to be tracked immediately, and it has probably gone into a non-standard orbit. The usual initial orbit for Oko satellites is about 500 x 39000 km x 62.9 deg; the Blok-I is in a standard 231 x 490 km x 62.8 deg low parking orbit. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Mar 1 0108 Envisat Ariane 5G Kourou ELA3 Rem.Sensing 09A Mar 1 1122 Columbia STS-109 Space Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 10A Mar 8 2259 TDRS I Atlas 2A Canaveral SLC36A Data relay 11A Mar 17 0921 GRACE 1 ) Rokot Plesetsk LC133 Science 12A GRACE 2 ) 12B Mar 19 2228 Kolibri - Progress, LEO Education 01-51C Mar 21 2013 Progress M1-8 Soyuz-FG Baykonur LC1 Cargo 13A Mar 25 1415 Shenzhou 3 ) CZ-2F Jiuquan Spaceship 14A SZ-3 module ) 14C Mar 29 0129 Astra 3A) Ariane 44L Kourou ELA3 Comms 15A JCSAT 8 ) Comms 15B Mar 30 1725 Intelsat 903 Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur LC81/23 Comms 16A Apr 1 2207 Kosmos-2388 Molniya-M Plesetsk LC16/2 Early Warn 17A Apr 8 2019 Atlantis STS-110) Space Shuttle Kennedy LC39B Spaceship 18A S0 ) Station piece Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF STS-107 2002 Jul 11 Spacehab OV-103 Discovery OPF Maintenance OV-104 Atlantis LEO STS-110 2002 Apr 8 ISS 8A OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1? STS-111 2002 Jun ISS UF-2 .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS6 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@cfa.harvard.edu | | USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/jsr.html | | Back issues: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/back | | Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@head-cfa.harvard.edu, (un)subscribe jsr | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'