Jonathan's Space Report No. 517 2004 Jan 2, Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The European Space Agency's Mars Express probe entered orbit around Mars on Dec 25 at 0321 UTC, completing a 34 minute engine burn begun at 0247 UTC. (Note: I am fairly confident that these times are actual event times as opposed to times the signals reached Earth, but would appreciate confirmation. Light time at insertion was 8min 44s.) The planned final orbit around Mars is 250 x 10243 km x 89 deg, and earlier data suggested the initial orbit would be 3585 x 130000 km x 13 deg, but I haven't seen any full orbital elements quoted yet for the actual orbit, although it appears the apogee was in fact around 188000 km. An apogee burn on Dec 30 changed the inclination to polar. The UK's Beagle-2 lander reached the surface of Mars on Dec 25 at 0252 UTC, but no signals have yet been received from it. It is hoped that Mars Express may pick up signals from it on Jan 4. The heatshield-encapsulated Beagle-2 entered the Martian atmosphere (at a fiducial height of 120 km) at 0247 UTC, at a speed of 5.5 km/s (does anyone know the flight-path entry angle?). Over the next two minutes it decelerated to a few hundred meters per second. If the descent went as planned, at 0250 UTC the heat shield was ejected together with the deployment of the pilot parachute, 7.1 km above the surface, and a minute later the main parachute was deployed. At 0251:43 the airbags were inflated at a height of 0.3 km and Beagle bounced onto the surface at 0252:00 UTC, at which point the parachute and backshell are jettisoned. The lander comes to rest and separates from the airbags by 0254 UTC. If for some reason the parachute system failed to operate, Beagle-2 would have impacted the surface as early as 0251 UTC. However, at this writing the British team at the control centers in Leicester and Milton Keynes are still very much hunting for the Beagle, and I remain mildly optimistic. Even if Beagle-2 is lost, it is still the first non-US, non-Soviet artifact to reach the surface of Mars (note: Japan's Hiten impacted the Moon in April 1993). The NASA/JPL Stardust space probe flew 230 km from the nucleus of comet 81P/Wild-2 at 1922 UTC on 2004 Jan 2. Stardust collected cometary material using aerogel dust collectors, and will return the material to the Earth in 2006. The flyby was at a relative velocity of 6.1 km/s; light time to Earth was 21m 40s. Israel's Amos-2 communications satellite was launched on Dec 27 by a Russian Soyuz-Fregat rocket. The Soyuz third stage was mildly suborbital, and the Fregat made a brief insertion burn, followed by two further burns to geostationary transfer orbit. A Krunichev Proton-K (No. 410-04) was launched from Baykonur on Dec 28 with an Energiya Blok DM-2M (No. 13L) and the Ekspress AM-22 communications satellite, built by NPO PM and Alcatel Space for GPKS, the Russian Space Communications Co. The Proton third stage entered low orbit, and the Blok DM-2M made two burns to geosynchronous orbit. China has launched Tan Ce 1 (Probe 1), also known in Europe as Double Star DSP-E, the equatorial member of a pair of Chinese-European magnetospheric research satellites carrying instrumentation from the Cluster program. The Chang Zheng 2C rocket carried an SM (or CTS) upper stage, derived from the Smart Dispenser used to deploy Iridium satellites and believed to be using an FG-47 solid motor. TC-1 reached a 555 x 78051 km x 28.5 deg orbit according to Xinhua, which says the probe has a mass of 350 kg (well, actually Xinhua's English site says a weight of 350 kilometers, but we know what they meant). This was the first CZ-2C launch from Xichang (it has flown from both Jiuquan and Taiyuan in the past). The flight profile doesn't seem to match the known properties of the FG-47, which is believed to carry only 160 kg of propellant. I expected the launch profile would have left stage 2 in a 180 to 200 x 555 km parking orbit, with the SM burn at apogee. In fact, spaceflightnow.com is reporting the third stage burn was complete by 12 min after launch, implying a direct ascent with a suborbital stage 2; a third stage burn at 21 min after launch seems more likely, since that would put apogee on the equator. No orbital data have yet been released for TC-1 from either the European mission center or USAF Space Command. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Nov 3 0720 JB-4? CZ-2D Jiuquan Micrograv 51C Nov 14 1601 Zhongxing-20 CZ-3A Xichang Comms 52A Nov 24 0622 Yamal-200 KA-1 ) Proton-K/DM-2M Baykonur PL81/23 Comms 53A Yamal-200 KA-2 ) Comms 53B Nov 29 0433 IGS-2a ) H-IIA 2024 Tanegashima Imaging F02 IGS-2b ) Radar F02 Dec 2 1004 USA 173 ) Atlas IIAS Vandenberg SLC3E Sigint 54A USA 173 P/L 2? ) Sigint 54C Dec 5 0600 Gruzomaket Strela Baykonur PL132 Test 55A Dec 10 1742 Kosmos-2402 ) Proton-K/Briz Baykonur PL81/24 Navigation 56A Kosmos-2403 ) Navigation 56B Kosmos-2404 ) Navigation 56C Dec 18 0230 UHF F/O F11 Atlas IIIB Canaveral SLC36B Comms 57A Dec 21 0805 GPS SVN 47 Delta 7925 Canaveral SLC17A Navigation 58A Dec 27 2130 Amos-2 Soyuz-FG/Fregat Baykonur PL31/6 Comms 59A Dec 28 2300 Ekspress AM-22 Proton-K/DM-2M Baykonur PL200/39 Comms 60A Dec 29 1906 Tan Ce 1 CZ-2C Xichang Science 61A .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Somerville MA 02143 | | | c/o | | | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'