Jonathan's Space Report No. 511 2003 Oct 9, Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Travel ------ All the most interesting events in space happen while I'm away on travel. In the next 10 days we expect the launch of the first Chinese astronaut aboard Shenzhou-5 and the launch of Soyuz TMA-3 with the Expedition 8 crew. However, I will have only intermittent access to the net while I am in Strasbourg and Darmstadt, and the JSR website will probably not be updated; expect full reports in late October. Shuttle and Station -------------------- Progress M1-10 has been deorbited. It undocked from the Station on Sep 4 and has spent a month on an Earth Observation mission. The deorbit engine ignited at 1126 UTC on Oct 3 from a 247 x 340 km x 51.6 deg orbit, reducing it to approximately 69 x 253 km. Progress M1-10 reentered the atmosphere over the Pacific at 1158 UTC and broke up around 1205 UTC. NASA is now scheduling the STS-114 return-to-flight mission for 2004 Sep 12, with the STS-121 followon mission on 2004 Nov 15. This schedule is likely to change further. Recent Launches --------------- Panamsat's Galaxy 13/Horizons-1 satellite was launched on Oct 1 by a Boeing Sea Launch Zenit-3SL rocket from the floating Odyssey platform at 154W 0N in the Pacific. The satellite carries both C-band and Ku-band communications payloads. The C-band payload is referred to as Galaxy 13; the Ku-band payload is jointly owned by Panamsat and the Japanese JSAT company and is called Horizons-1; this latter will help carry digital data services between the Americas and Asia via a relay station in Hawaii. The satellite is a Boeing 601HP model. The Yuzhnoe Zenit-3SL second stage separated in a -1917 x 185 km x 0 deg suborbital path 8 min after launch and fell back to the Pacific. The Energiya Blok DM-SL upper stage reached an initial 180 x 8353 km x 0 deg parking orbit 16 min after launch, then restarted and separated from the payload 1 hour after launch in a 2396 x 35751 km x 0.04 deg geostationary transfer orbit. Launch mass was 4090 kg. As of Oct 8, most of the Ariane 516 payloads were still recorded in their initial orbits by Space Command, although Insat 3E is known to have made several orbit raising burns and is now in a geostationary drift orbit. The e-Bird satellite fired its apogee motor at about 1025 UTC on Sep 30. 75 debris objects, SSN 27964-28038, have been cataloged from the explosion of a small Proton SOZ ullage rocket in orbit. Each Energiya Blok DM class upper stage uses two small liquid motors to accelerate the stage and push propellant to the back of the tanks before starting the main engine for the DM's second burn. In most variants of the stage, these ullage rockets, called SOZ (sistema obespecheniya zapuska), are ejected as soon as the main engine reaches full thrust and remain in the transfer orbit. Over the years materials in the SOZ can degrade and allow leftover fuel and oxidizer to mix, causing an explosion. In this particular case, Proton 349-02 was launched from Baykonur on 1988 Sep 16 at 0200 UTC and placed a payload section in orbit consisting of the upper stage, Blok DM2 11S861 No. 43L, and three Uragan navigation satelites, Nos. 42L, 43L and 44L, given the cover names Kosmos-1970, 1971 and 1972 after launch. The DM2 fired to enter an eccentric orbit with an apogee of 19100 km and then at apogee the SOZ units fired, separated into a 413 x 19112 km x 64.9 deg orbit, and the DM2 fired to circularize the orbit and release the Uragans. The two SOZ units were cataloged as 19535/1988-85F and 19537/1988-85G. Since the demise of NASA's quarterly orbital debris report, there's no source that identifies the origin of orbital debris - hopefully some reader with good orbit propagation software can figure out which of the two objects was the source of the explosion. The debris objects are in orbits of 400-760 x 18100-18850 km x 65.2-65.7 deg; In September SOZ-1 1988-85F was in a 717 x 18510 km x 65.3 deg orbit, and SOZ-2 1988-85G was in a 713 x 18327 km x 65.2 deg orbit. SOZ-1 hasn't had any new orbital data since Aug 23, so it seems a reasonable guess that it is the one that exploded. The explosion occurred between mid August and Sep 9. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Sep 9 0429 USA 171 Titan 4B/Centaur Canaveral SLC40 Sigint 41A Sep 16 PS2 KT-1 Taiyuan Test F01 Sep 27 0612 STSat-1 ) Astronomy 42A UK-DMC ) Imaging 42 NigeriaSat-1 ) Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC132 Imaging 42 BILSAT-1 ) Imaging 42 Mozhaets-4 ) Comms? 42 Larets ) Calib? 42 Rubin-4-DSI ) Test 42 Sep 27 2314 Insat 3E ) Ariane 5G Kourou ELA3 Comms 43E e-Bird ) Comms 43B SMART-1 ) Lunar 43 Oct 1 0403 Galaxy 13 Zenit-3SL SL Odyssey Comms 44A .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | 1 Fitchburg St C-205 | | | Somerville MA 02143 | | | and | | | Center for Astrophysics, | | | 60 Garden St, MS6 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@host.planet4589.org | | USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://www.planet4589.org/jsr.html | | Back issues: http://www.planet4589.org/space/jsr/back | | Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@host.planet4589.org, (un)subscribe jsr | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'