Jonathan's Space Report No. 151 1993 Apr 26 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ STS-55 ----------------- Columbia was launched on mission STS-55 at 1450.00 UTC on 1993 Apr 26. The payload is the German Spacelab D-2 module. This is Columbia's 14th flight. Discovery has now made 16 flights (it started later, but Columbia was out of service for most of the 1983-1988 period, only making two flights in those 5 years, which put it behind). Hans-Wilhelm Schlegel and Ulrich Walter become the 6th and 7th German space travelers, after Sigmund Jahn, Ulf Merbold, Reinhard Furrer, Ernst Messerschmid, and Klaus-Dietrich Flade. NASA crew members are Steve Nagel, Tom Henricks, Jerry Ross, Charles Precourt, and Bernard Harris. Spacelab D-2 carries materials processing and life sciences experiments, as well as an ultraviolet Schmidt camera which will image the galactic plane. Launches -------- Kosmos-2242, a signals intelligence spacecraft was launched on Apr 16 from Plesetsk by Tsiklon into a 632 x 666 km x 82.5 deg orbit. The launch vehicle, and possibly the spacecraft, are built by the Ukrainian company NPO Yuzhnoye. A Molniya-3 communications spacecraft was launched on Apr 21 from Plesetsk using the standard R-7 Soyuz vehicle with a Blok-L fourth stage, a configuration known as the Molniya launch vehicle. There are two types of Molniya in service, the Molniya-1 used for Russian government and military communications and the Molniya-3 used for television programming. They are built by NPO Prikladnoi Mekhaniki of Krasnoyarsk, Russia. The Molniya satellites use a highly elliptical orbit with a 12 hour period; most of the time is spent near apogee high over northern Russia. Date Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Apr 1 1900? Kosmos-2239 Kosmos R-14 Plesetsk Navsat 20A Apr 2 1410? Kosmos-2240 Soyuz Plesetsk Recon? 21A Apr 6 1910? Kosmos-2241 Molniya Plesetsk Early Warn 22A Apr 8 0529 Discovery Shuttle Kennedy LC39 Spaceship 23A Apr 11 0611 Spartan-201 Discovery,LEO Astronomy 23B Apr 16 0800? Kosmos-2242 Tsiklon Plesetsk SIGINT 24A Apr 21 0030? Molniya-3 Molniya Plesetsk Comsat 25A Apr 26 1450 Columbia Shuttle Kennedy LC39 Spaceship Reentries --------- Apr 1 Mak-2 Reentered Apr 17 Discovery Landed at KSC Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission OV-102 Columbia LEO STS-55 OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 3 STS-51 OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP OV-105 Endeavour VAB Bay 1 STS-57 ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/ ML2/STS-57/ET/OV-105 VAB Bay 1 ML3/ LC39A .-----------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS4 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@urania.harvard.edu | | USA | | '-----------------------------------------------------------------------------'