Jonathan's Space Report No. 143 1993 Feb 10 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ STS-55 ------ Columbia is on pad 39A, ready for launch later in the month for the Spacelab D-2 mission. Mir --- Progress TM-15 undocked from Mir on Feb 4. Later the same day, in a 400 km altitude orbit, it deployed the Znamya solar sail. The Progress was used to point the sail for the mirror experiment, where sunlight was reflected onto Western Europe; the patch of light was observed by the Mir cosmonauts. Znamya was then jettisoned; because of its high surface area to mass ratio, atmospheric drag rapidly lowered its orbit. By 0930 on Feb 5 it was in a 191 x 203 km orbit and it reportedly has since reentered. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Launches -------- A McDonnell Douglas Delta 7925 rocket launched the Rockwell Navstar GPS 22 satellite on Feb 3 into a 174x 20387 km x 34.8 deg orbit. The satellite's on board apogee motor was then due to circularize the orbit at 20000 km and change the inclination to 55 degrees. The satellite has been given the designation USA 88. I note that the classified satellite deployed by Discovery in December has still not been given either a USA number or a NORAD/Space Command permanent satellite catalog number. This is the first time that any US payload has been omitted from the official satellite catalog, and seems a particularly pathetic attempt at pretending it doesn't exist, given that the object was observed by amateurs at sites across the world. The omission is further confirmation that the spacecraft has a signals intelligence mission, since historically these satellites are treated with the most secrecy. It will be interesting to see whether the US will include the satellite in its next list of launchings submitted to the United Nations under the Convention on Registration of Space Objects. Only satellite USA-72 has so far been omitted from these listings entirely, although other classified payloads have been listed with erroneous or misleading orbital information. Orbital Sciences Corp.'s third Pegasus launch was a success. NASA's NB-52 (S/N 008) flew from Edwards AFB to Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying the Pegasus F3 launch vehicle, nicknamed 'Santos Dumont'. On Feb 9 the NB-52 took off from the SLF (Shuttle Landing Facility, RW05/33) at Kennedy at around 1320 UTC and flew until it was 130 km off the coast at 13 km altitude. The Pegasus was dropped at 1430 UTC and its Hercules Orion 50S first stage motor ignited 5 seconds later. All three stages worked well and Pegasus placed its Orion 38 third stage and the 110 kg Brazilian SCD-1 satellite in a 750 x 770 km x 25.0 deg orbit. The 'Satelite de Coleta de Dados' is operated by the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espacias (INPE) and will be used to forward environmental data from remote stations in the Amazon, basin to a central ground station. Date Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Feb 3 0255 Navstar GPS 22 Delta Canaveral Navsat 07A Feb 4 Znamya - Prog.M15,LEO R&D 1986-17GZ Feb 9 1430 SCD-1 NB52/Pegasus F3 Kennedy Comsat Reentries --------- Jan 24 Kosmos-1463 Reentered Feb 1 Soyuz TM-15 Landed in Kazakhstan Feb 5? Znamya Reentered Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission OV-102 Columbia LC39A STS-55 OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 3 STS-56 OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-57 ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/STS-56 VAB Bay 1 ML2/ ML3/STS-55/ET/OV-102 LC39A .-----------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS4 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : mcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | USA | | '-----------------------------------------------------------------------------'