Jonathan's Space Report No. 360 1998 May 17 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Mir --------------- The next Shuttle mission is STS-91; orbiter OV-103 Discovery will dock with Mir to pick up Andrew Thomas, the final NASA resident on the station, and allow an inspection visit by Russian Shuttle-Mir program director Valeriy Ryumin. Charles Precourt and Dominic Gorie will be commander and pilot, with payload commander Franklin Chang-Diaz and mission specialists Wendy Lawrence and Janet Kavandi. Dr. Chang-Diaz, a member of the 1980 group of astronauts, will be making his sixth space flight, equalling the record set by John Young and Story Musgrave. Ryumin has been involved in the design and development of all of the DOS orbital stations from Salyut to Mir, and made three flights in the Salyut-6 program in 1977-1980, becoming at that time the spaceflight duration record holder. Russia launched the Progress 7K-TGM (11F615A55) No. 238 cargo ship from Baykonur on May 14. Progress spacecraft 238 was renamed Progress M-39 after launch. It docked with Mir at 2351 UTC on May 16, bringing supplies and scientific experiments to the station. Progress M-38 undocked May 15 at 1844 UTC, freeing up the docking port on the Kvant module for the new cargo ship. Recent Launches --------------- The NOAA K weather satellite was launched on May 13 from Vandenberg, and renamed NOAA 15 on reaching orbit. NOAA K is an Advanced Tiros N class weather satellite built by Lockheed Martin/East Windsor for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite (POES) program. NOAA K carries a new microwave sensor as well as the usual complement of optical/near-infrared radiometers and imagers and the SARSAT search and rescue package. It was the first NOAA launch to use the Titan 23G launch vehicle, a refurbished ICBM. Titan 23G-12 took off from Space Launch Complex 4-West at Vandenberg and delivered NOAA K into a suborbital trajectory 6 min later. A Thiokol (Cordant Technologies) Star 37XFP solid motor on the satellite fired at apogee to put NOAA K in orbit; this is a more powerful version of the Star 37S orbit insertion motor used on earlier Tiros N satellites. Another successful launch for the Boeing Delta 2 placed five more Motorola Iridium satellites in orbit on May 17. This is the final launch in the initial deployment of the Iridium constellation, but launches of replacement satellites will continue. I don't have the satellite numbers for the new launch yet; the next free numbers are SV 70,72,73,74,75. The Blok DM3 stage for the May 7 Proton launch did indeed make two burns (see last week's issue). The second burn left Echostar in an 8318 x 35750 km x 15.3 deg orbit; the liquid apogee motor raised perigee to 12263 km a few days later. No element sets for the second burn transfer orbit reached the Goddard web site at the time, but a Space Command element set later reached the JPL archive sites. Table of Recent Launches ------------------------ Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Apr 2 0242 TRACE Pegasus XL Vandenberg RW30/15 Solar obs. 20A Apr 7 0213 Iridium 62 Proton-K/DM2 Baykonur Comsat 21A Iridium 63 Comsat 21B Iridium 64 Comsat 21C Iridium 65 Comsat 21D Iridium 66 Comsat 21E Iridium 67 Comsat 21F Iridium 68 Comsat 21G Apr 17 1819 Columbia ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39B Spaceship 22A Neurolab ) Apr 24 2238 Globalstar FM6) Delta 7420 Canaveral SLC17 Comsat 23A Globalstar FM8) 23B Globalstar FM14) 23C Globalstar FM15) 23D Apr 28 2253 Nilesat 1 ) Ariane 44P Kourou ELA2 Comsat 24A BSAT 1B ) Comsat 24B Apr 29 0437 Kosmos-2350 Proton-K/DM-2 Baykonur Comsat? 25A May 2 0916 Iridium 69 CZ-2C/SD Taiyuan Comsat 26A Iridium 71 Comsat 26B May 7 0853 Kosmos-2351 Molniya-M Plesetsk Early Warn 27A May 7 2345 Echostar 4 Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur Comsat 28A May 9 0138 USA 139 Titan Centaur Canaveral SLC40 Sigint 29A May 13 1552 NOAA 15 Titan 2 Vandenberg SLC4W Weather 30A May 14 2212 Progress M-39 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 31A May 17 2116 Iridium ) Delta 7920 Vandenberg SLC2W Comsat 32A Iridium ) 32B Iridium ) 32C Iridium ) 32D Iridium ) 32E Current Shuttle Processing Status __________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-93 Dec 3 OV-103 Discovery LC39A STS-91 Jun 2 OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-88 ? MLP/SRB/ET/OV stacks MLP1/RSRM66/ET-96/OV-103 LC39A STS-91 MLP2/ MLP3/ .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS6 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@urania.harvard.edu | | USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/jsr.html | | Back issues: ftp://sao-ftp.harvard.edu/pub/jcm/space/news/news.* | | Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@head-cfa.harvard.edu, (un)subscribe jsr | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'