Jonathan's Space Report No. 731 2016 Nov 2 Somerville, MA --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Apologies for the long gap between reports, caused by pressure of work follwing (gasp) an actual vacation. International Space Station --------------------------- Expedition 50 began at 0035 UTC Oct 30 following a change of command ceremony at 1937 UTC Oct 28. The Nanoracks NRCSD-9 dispenser was extracted from Kibo's airlock on Sep 14 and eight Flock 2e-Prime cubesats for Planet were deployed. These were the final payloads from a batch delivered aboard Cygnus OA-6. On Oct 17 an Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo ship, the SS Alan Poindexter, was launched on mission OA-5. The launch was the first flight of the Antares 230 rocket, featuring a first stage with two Energomash RD-181 engines replacing the Kuznetsov/Aerojet AJ-26 engines used on earlier Antares missions (which were implicated in the Oct 2014 Antares 130 failure), and a second stage with the Castor 30XL solid motor. The Castor 30XL was on the previous Antares launch but didn't get a chance to fire because of the first stage failure, so this was its first real test. In the event the rocket performed above specification and the mission reached a higher-than-planned 209 x 351 km orbit. OA-5 reached the ISS on Oct 23; it was grappled by the SSRMS at 1128 UTC and berthed to the nadir port of the Unity module at 1453 UTC. Cygnus OA-5 carries 2345 kg of pressurized cargo, and the external Nanoracks deployer with four Spire Global Lemur-2 cubesats. Oct 19 saw the launch of Soyuz MS-02 with astronauts Sergey Ryzhikov, Andrey Borisenko and Shane Kimbrough. They docked with the Poisk module at 0952 UTC Oct 21. On Oct 30 at 0035 UTC Ivanishin, Onishi and Rubins undocked from Rassvet in Soyuz MS-01; they landed in Kazakhstan at 0358 UTC. Rosetta ------- The ESA Rosetta spacecraft, following close flyovers of the nucleus of comet 67P in the 2 to 10 km range during September, made a deorbit burn at 2050 UTC Sep 29 and touched down on 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at 1039 UTC Sep 30 at a velocity of 0.9m/s. The spacecraft would have been unable to communicate from the nucleus surface even if it had survived and the mission was declared complete after the corresponding light travel time delay with loss of signal in Darmstadt at 1119 UTC. Rosetta was launched on 2004 Mar 2 by Ariane L518 into a 0.88 x 1.09 AU x 0.4 deg solar orbit. It made a 1955 km Earth flyby on 2005 Mar 4, a 250 km Mars flyby on 2007 Feb 25, and a 5301 km Earth flyby on 2007 Nov 13 which left it in a 0.91 x 2.26 AU x 7.7 deg solar orbit. Following an 800 km flyby of asteroid (2867) Steins on 2008 Sep 5 and a 3162 km flyby of (21) Lutetia on 2010 Jul 10, it made rendezvous with 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 2014 Aug 6 and ejected the Philae lander from a range of 22 km on 2014 Nov 12. Rosetta remained within 500 km of the 67P nucleus following its rendezvous except for a far excursion trajectory from 2015 Sep 23 to Oct 20 when it receded to a maximum distance of 1490 km and an anti-sunward excursion from 2016 Mar 28 to 2016 Apr 3, at a maximum distance of around 1000 km. ExoMars ------- The ExoMars spacecraft entered the Martian gravitational Hill sphere at 0110 UTC Oct 16, and at 1442 UTC Oct 16 split into the separate TGO (Trace Gas Orbiter) and EDM (Entry-Descent-Landing Demonstrator Module) vehicles. TGO made an insertion burn on Oct 19 from 1304 to 1523 UTC, entering a 4-day-period, 346 x 95228 km x 9.7 orbit deg around Mars. The EDM, named Schiaparelli, approached on a 62 x -13982 km x 8.2 deg hyperbola and entered the Martian atmosphere at 1442 UTC at a speed of 5.86 km/s and an angle of -11.9 degrees. During descent, data was relayed to Mars orbiting spacecraft for later retransmission as well as sent on a live link picked up by the GMRT radio telescope near Pune, India. Schiaparelli survived the entry and deployed its parachute 4 minutes later at an altitude of 11 km. The heatshield was jettisoned 30 seconds later, and at 1447 UTC the parachute and attached backshell were separated at an altitude of 1.3 km over the Meridiani Planum landing site at 6.11W 2.07S. It now appears that the parachute/backshell separated 15 seconds earlier than expected, for unknown reasons. Further, the thrusters fired for only 3 seconds, and the lander transitioned to landing mode while still well above the surface. A free fall of 19 seconds ensued, followed by a high speed (hundreds of km/hr) impact. At this point, unsurprisingly, communications from the lander ceased. MRO has imaged the EDM lander's impact scar at 6.11W 2.07S. The parachute appears to be 0.16km E 0.91km S of the lander. Tiangong 2 and Shenzhou 11 -------------------------- China's second space laboratory was launched on Sep 15. Tiangong 2 has a mass of 8600 km and was launched into a low perigee orbit by a CZ-2F rocket. On Sep 16 at about 0904 UTC the lab raised its orbit from an initial 197 x 373 km to 369 x 378 km x 42.8 deg; on Sep 26 the lab moved to a 381 x 389 km orbit. The latest Chinese discussion of Tiangong 1 is more explicit than previous reports in its confirmation that the old spacelab will reenter naturally rather than be deorbited. Reentry will probably occur sometime in the second half of 2017. Tiangong-1's current orbit is 358 x 380 km x 42.8 deg, and its last orbit raising burn occurred on 2015 Dec 16. On Oct 16 China launched Shenhzou 11 with astronauts Jing Haipeng and Chen Dong; two days later, at 1924 UTC Oct 18, it docked with Tiangong-2 to begin what is planned as a month-long mission. On Oct 22 at 2331 UTC TG-2 ejected a 47 kg 'bansui weixing' (subsatellite) which will remain in formation with TG-2 to image the complex. Meanwhile the first CZ-5 launch vehicle has been rolled out to the pad on the island of Hainan, with launch expected in the coming days. Vega VV07 --------- Arianespace's Vega rocket made its 7th flight from Kourou on Sep 16. The AVUM upper stage made two burns to deploy TerraBella's SkySat 4 to 7 in a 500 km orbit at 0224 UTC, and then two further burns to put PeruSAT-1 in a 677 km orbit at 0326 UTC. The AVUM made a final burn to deorbit itself in the Indian Ocean west of Sumatra. PSLV ---- India's PSLV-C35 vehicle was launched on Sep 26 with a cluster of small satellites. For the first time, the PS4 final stage made multiple burns to deliver payloads to different orbits. Its first burn reached a 718 x 732 km orbit at 0358 UTC, and ISRO's SCATSAT ocean wind speed scatterometer mission was deployed at 0359. At 0504 and 0554 UTC two more burns reached a 661 x 704 km orbit and the DLA dual launch adapter was ejected, followed by deployment of the remaining payloads: PRATHAM from IIT Bombay, with an ionospheric science instrument; PISAT from PES University, Bangalore, with an 80m resolution imager; CanX-7 from UTIAS/Toronto, with a deployable deorbit sail; Pathfinder 1 from Black Sky Global (Seattle) with a 1 meter imager; and three imaging satellites for the Algerian space agency ASAL: ALSAT-1B built by Surrey; ALSAT-2B built by Airbus/Toulouse; and ALSAT-1N, a cubesat built by Algerian engineers in Surrey and integrated in Algeria. IS-33e ------- Intelsat's IS-33e communications satellite, a Boeing BSS-702MP model, has suffered a failure of its main Leros apogee thruster in geotransfer orbit. Orbit raising was delayed until late September; by Oct 18 the satellite was in a 31428 x 35927 km x 0.1 deg orbit. Ariane L585 ----------- Ariane vehicle L585 was launched Oct 5 on mission VA231, placing two communications sats in geotransfer orbit: Sky Muster II for the Australian NBN broadcaster, and GSAT-18 for the Indian Space Research Organization. STEREO-B -------- Communications with the STEREO-B science craft in solar orbit had been lost on 2014 Oct 1 for unknown reasons; by 2016 it was assumed the mission had been lost, but on Aug 21 the big DSS-14 dish at Goldstone picked up a signal from it. This was great news for the heliophysics community, but attempts to recover full communications with the tumbling and underpowered spacecraft have met with mixed success, and as of Oct 11 recovery attempts were scaled back until STEREO-B drifts into a more favorable attitude and orbital position. Table of Recent Orbital Launches ---------------------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. Catalog Perigee Apogee Incl Notes km km deg Sep 8 1120 Insat-3DR GSLV Mk II Satish Dawan SLP Weather 54A S41752 152 x 35935 x 20.6 Sep 8 2305 OSIRIS-REx Atlas V 411 Canaveral SLC41 Space probe 55A S41757 203 x-40174 x 29.5 Escape Sep 13 1348? 'Ofeq-11 Shavit Palmachim Imaging 56A S41759 250? x 600? x141? Sep 14 1525 Flock 2e'-13 ) ISS, LEO Imaging 9867KH S41761 401? x 409? x 51.6 Flock 2e'-14 ) ISS, LEO Imaging 9867KJ S41762 401? x 409? x 51.6 Sep 14 2315 Flock 2e'-15 ) ISS, LEO Imaging 9867KK S41764 401? x 409? x 51.6 Flock 2e'-16 ) ISS, LEO Imaging 9867KL S41763 401? x 409? x 51.6 Sep 15 0235 Flock 2e'-17 ) ISS, LEO Imaging 9867KN S41776 401? x 409? x 51.6 Flock 2e'-18 ) ISS, LEO Imaging 9867KM S41769 401? x 409? x 51.6 Sep 15 0540 Flock 2e'-19 ) ISS, LEO Imaging 9867KQ S41782 401? x 409? x 51.6 Flock 2e'-20 ) ISS, LEO Imaging 9867KP S41777 401? x 409? x 51.6 Sep 15 1404 Tiangong-2 Chang Zheng 2F Jiuquan Space lab 57A S41765 379 x 389 x 42.8 Sep 16 0143 PeruSAT-1 ) Vega Kourou ELV Imaging 58A S41770 676 x 678 x 98.2 SkySat-4 ) Imaging 58D S41773 501 x 502 x 97.4 SkySat-5 ) Imaging 58E S41774 501 x 502 x 97.4 SkySat-6 ) Imaging 58B S41771 497 x 506 x 97.4 SkySat-7 ) Imaging 58C S41772 501 x 503 x 97.4 Sep 26 0342 ScatSat-1 ) PSLV Satish Dhawan FLP Ocean winds 59H S41790 717 x 733 x 98.1 0915LT SSO Pratham ) Tech 59A S41783 660 x 707 x 98.2 0930LT SSO PISAT ) Tech 59B S41784 661 x 705 x 98.2 0930LT SSO Pathfinder 1) Imaging 59E S41787 660 x 703 x 98.2 0930LT SSO CanX-7 ) Tech 59F S41788 660 x 702 x 98.2 0930LT SSO ALSAT-1B ) Imaging 59C S41785 661 x 704 x 98.2 0930LT SSO ALSAT-2B ) Imaging 59D S41786 672 x 673 x 98.2 0930LT SSO ALSAT-Nano ) Tech 59G S41789 660 x 700 x 98.2 0930LT SSO Oct 5 2030 Sky Muster II ) Ariane 5 Kourou ELA3 Comms 60B S41794 35292 x 35806 x 0.1 GSAT-18 ) Comms 60A S41793 24135 x 35831 x 0.5 Oct 16 2330 Shenzhou 11 Chang Zheng 2F Jiuquan Spaceship 61A S41812 378 x 389 x 42.8 Docked to TG2 Oct 17 2345 SS Alan Poindexter Antares 230 Wallops MARS LA0A Cargo 62A S41818 373 x 395 x 51.6 Oct 19 0805 Soyuz MS-02 Soyuz-FG Baykonur LC31 Spaceship 63A S41820 289 x 306 x 51.6 Docked ISS Oct 22 2331 TG-2 bansui weixing TG-2, LEO Tech 57H S41834 374 x 384 x 42.8 Table of Recent Suborbital Launches ----------------------------------- On Oct 5 Blue Origin flew the New Shepard rocket vehicle from the West Texas launch site to an apogee of 93.7 km and landed it nearby 7min29s after launch. On this mission the New Shepard crew capsule, which normally separates at apogee, instead fired its pusher abort motors 45 seconds after launch at an altitude of 4.9 km, reaching an apogee of 7.0 km and landing 4min16s after launch. Before launch it was expected that the in-flight abort separation of the capsule would destroy the booster rocket but in the event the rocket's flight did not appear to be affected. This was the 5th flight of New Shepard rocket vehicle 2, and possibly the 6th flight of the first Crew Capsule. Date UT Payload/Flt Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission Apogee/km Target Aug 31 RV x 4? Trident II D-5 SSBN 738, Eastern Range Test 1000? Atlantic Ocean Sep 5 0314 RV Hwasong-ER? Hwangju, N Korea Test 100? Sea of Japan Sep 5 0314 RV Hwasong-ER? Hwangju, N Korea Test 100? Sea of Japan Sep 5 0314 RV Hwasong-ER? Hwangju, N Korea Test 100? Sea of Japan Sep 5 0910 GT219GM Minuteman 3 Vandenberg AFB LF04 Op. test. 1300? Kwajalein Sep 9 RV Topol' Plesetsk Test 1000? Kura, Kamchatka Sep 27 RV Bulava K-535, White Sea Test 1000? Kura, Kamchatka Oct 5 1536 New Shepard New Shepard West Texas Abort test 94 West Texas Oct 12 RV Volna K-433, Sea of Okhotsk Test 1000? Chiza Oct 12 RV Sineva K-407, Barents Sea Test 1000? Kura Oct 12 RV Topol' Plesetsk Test 1000? Kura Oct 25 0858 RV UR-100NU Yasniy Test 1000? Kura .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | | | Somerville MA 02143 | inter : planet4589 at gmail | | USA | twitter: @planet4589 | | | | JSR: http://www.planet4589.org/jsr.html | | Back issues: http://www.planet4589.org/space/jsr/back | | Subscribe/unsub: http://www.planet4589.org/mailman/listinfo/jsr | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'
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