Jonathan's Space Report No 430 2000 Jul 18, Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Stations -------------------- The eighth civilian Salyut-class space station 17KSM No. 128-1, the Zvezda module, was successfully launched on Jul 12 at 0456 UTC. The three stage Krunichev Proton-K rocket reached orbit at 0505 UTC. This was the fifth Proton launch in a month. Launch mass of Zvezda is 20295 kg according to Vladimir Agapov. Docking of Zvezda and the ISS Unity/Zarya complex is due later this month. Zvezda's initial orbit was 179 x 332 km x 51.6 deg. On Jul 14 the orbit was raised to 288 x 357 km. ISS is in a 365 x 372 km orbit. Zvezda is outwardly almost identical to the Mir core module launched in 1986, and the main structure is similar to all the civilian DOS orbital stations launched since 1971 built by the Krunichev company and developed and operated by Energiya. DOS civilian space stations -------------------------- Prelaunch names Postlaunch Launch Notes name date DOS 1 17K No. 121 Salyut 1971 Apr 19 Soyuz-11 crew died on reentry DOS 2 17K No. 122 - 1972 Jul 29 Launch failure DOS 3 17K No. 123 Kosmos-557 1973 May 11 Failed at orbit insertion DOS 4 17K No. 124 Salyut-4 1974 Dec 26 Set new duration record DOS 5 17K No. 125 Salyut-6 1977 Sep 29 First use of Progress tankers DOS 6 17K No. 125-2 Salyut-7 1982 Apr 19 Backup to Salyut-6 DOS 7 17K No. 127 Mir 1986 Feb 19 Multiple docking port node DOS 8? 17KSM No. 128-1 Zvezda 2000 Jul 12 Space Station Service Module The military Almaz space stations (Salyut-2, Salyut-3, Salyut-5), the TKS ferry spaceship, and the FGB type modules share a similar design. Deep Space One -------------- Deep Space 1 was launched into solar orbit in Oct 1998 with a perihelion near that of the Earth and an aphelion half way to the orbit of Mars. Managed by JPL, tt was the first of NASA's New Millennium missions to test advanced space technology, and featured experimental on-board software, miniature sensors, and the first use of an ion engine for extensive orbital changes. Although DS1 is the first craft to use ion drive to reach a target orbit, there's been very little information available in the public domain about its trajectory. DS1 mission manager Marc Rayman has been kind enough to rectify this by providing me with orbital data, and I've extracted some highlights here. (The JSR catalog of full heliocentric orbital elements for all the probes since Luna-1 is still slowly taking shape, I hope to release it sometime next year). The early tests of its ion engine in Nov 1998 - Jan 1999 increased the aphelion by 6 million km. A second burn phase in Mar-Apr 1999 increased perihelion by 4.8 million km, leaving DS1 in an orbit which flew past minor planet (9969) Braille in Jul 1999 near aphelion. A third burn phase in Jul-Oct 1999 raised perihelion by 10 million km more, and lowered inclination to 0.2 deg. In the meantime, on Sep 18 DS1 had successfuly completed its primary mission. The failure of DS1's star tracker soon afterwards left a follow-on mission in doubt - without the star tracker, DS1 did not know which way it was pointing, which makes it hard to steer. In a remarkable success for JPL, the DS1 team reprogrammed the spacecraft to use images from its MICAS science camera - with a field of view a hundred times smaller than the star tracker - and reformat them into a data stream compatible with the navigation system. They were helped by one of DS1's advanced technology tests, an autonomous navigation software package that used MICAS data, but its processing is only the first step in a long chain of software, so it's darn impressive that they managed to make it work. They can only fire the ion engine in directions where they can see an appropriately bright guide star in the MICAS. Developing a way of navigating using as few stars as possible was another challenge: only half a dozen will be needed for its new target, comet 19P/Borrelly, which requires a much bigger orbit change than the earlier burns. The trajectory can be fine-tuned by changing the date on which one star is replaced by another. After a massive effort, all was ready by June, with the ion engine starting again on Jun 28. DS1 will encounter comet 19P/Borrelly in Sep 2001. -------- DS1 Orbital Data --------------------- Date Period Perihelion x Aphelion x Incl 1998 Nov 10 446.6d 0.990 x 1.287 AU x 0.37 deg 1999 Jan 22 459.5d 0.990 x 1.331 AU x 0.38 deg 1999 Apr 27 470.4d 1.022 x 1.336 AU x 0.26 deg 1999 Oct 27 492.6d 1.090 x 1.342 AU x 0.19 deg 2001 Feb (564.9d 1.287 x 1.378 AU x 0.20 deg) planned 2001 May (584.8d 1.291 x 1.436 AU x 0.21 deg) planned Perihelia: Oct 1998, Feb 2000, May 2001. -------- Thanks to Marc Rayman, JPL ------------ Current Launches ---------------- Kosmos-2371 was launched from Baykonur on Jul 4 at 2344 UTC. The spacecraft is a Geizer military communications relay. The Blok DM upper stage inserted the Geizer into geosynchronous orbit at 0620 UTC on Jul 5. Geizer satellites are built by NPO PM using the KAUR-3 bus. The Sirius 1 digital radio satellite was inserted into a 6166 x 47110 km x 63.4 deg transfer orbit by its Proton-K/Blok DM3 launch vehicle. Its onboard R4D liquid apogee engine made several burns to raise its orbit to 24388 x 47097 km x 63.3 deg by July 8. This elliptical, inclined orbit has a 24 hour period, and its looping orbit keeps the satellite between longitude 60W and 140W, with apogee over the northern hemisphere. The Sirius 1 satellite is a Space Systems/Loral LS-1300 satellite with a dry mass of 1570 kg. Echostar Communication Corp's Echostar VI comsat was launched by International Launch Services on Jul 14 using a Lockheed Martin Atlas IIAS rocket. Flight AC-161 reached a 155 x 436 km x 28.3 deg parking orbit, and then reignited the Centaur to deliver Echostar to a 166 x 38191 km x 26.6 deg transfer orbit. Echostar VI is a Space Systems/Loral LS-1300 satellite with a dry mass of 1493 kg. Germany's CHAMP minisatellite was launched on Jul 15 from Plesetsk by a Polyot Kosmos-3M rocket into a 421 x 476 km x 87.3 deg orbit. This was the second recent Kosmos-3M launch to a new inclination: before last week's sun-synchronous launch the highest inclination achieved from Plesetsk was 83 degrees. CHAMP is a geophysics research satellite operated by GFZ, the Potsdam geophysics center to study the magnetic field and the gravitational field. The satellite has a mass of 550 kg. Along with CHAMP were launched MITA, an Italian Space Agency experimental microsatellite built by Carlo Gavazzi Space of Milano, and Rubin, a microsatellite to measure launch vehicle parameters developed by OHB and students of the Hochschule Bremen. MITA has a mass of 170 kg and carries the NINA particle detector and an experimental attitude control system. The Rubin payload remains attached to the payload adapter on the Kosmos-3M final stage. Rubin is also called BIRD-Rubin in some references, but confusingly is not related to the BIRD microsatellite originally slated for this launch. Thanks to Christian Stelter, Carlo Cicone and Eduard Muller for information. The first two European Space Agency Cluster II satellites, Samba (FM7) and Salsa (FM6) were launched on Jul 16. The remaining pair, Rumba (FM5) and Tango (FM8) will be launched next month. The Soyuz-U launch vehicle took off from Area 31 (Pad 6); third stage separation delivered the Upper Composite consisting of the Fregat upper stage and two Clusters to a suborbital trajectory. Fregat's first burn was to a 200 km circular orbit with a 64.8 deg inclination. A second burn placed the Clusters in a 250 x 18072 km x 64.7 deg transfer orbit. FM7 was ejected first, followed by FM6 ten seconds later. The Soyuz launch vehicle is built by TsSKB-Progress, with the Fregat upper stage developed by Lavochkin, and the Soyuz-Fregat launch services provided by the French company Starsem. The Cluster satellites are built by Astrium/Friedrichshafen (former Dornier). Both satellites carry Astrium (former MBB) S400 liquid engines which will be used to enter a much higher polar orbit. The remaining two satellites will rendezvous with them for formation flying to sample magnetospheric properties. Each satellite will deploy four 50-meter wire antennas and has a dry mass of 550 kg. The first perigee burns were made on Jul 17 and Jul 18 to 240 x 35300 km; the satellites will first go to a 18000 x 121000 km x 65 deg orbit and then change inclination at apogee (where the velocity is low, so it's cheap to make a big change) to a 90 deg polar orbit. A Navstar GPS navigation satellite was launched on Jul 16 at 0917 UTC by Boeing Delta 7925 from Cape Canaveral. I believe this to be satellite SVN 44, although Space Command has cataloged it as Navstar 48. The GPS IIR series are built by Lockheed Martin/Sunnyvale and have a dry mass of 980 kg. The Delta second stage entered a 151 x 337 km x 36.9 deg parking orbit at 0928 UTC. It fired again to raise apogee; after depletion stage 2 was in a 195 x 1322 km x 37.6 deg orbit. The PAM-D third stage then fired and placed the GPS satellite in a 209 x 20445 km x 38.9 deg transfer orbit. The GPS will fire its Thiokol Star 37XFP solid kick motor to circularize at apogee on Jul 18. An Orbital Sciences Minotaur was being prepared for launch from Vandenberg as I write this; details next issue. Errata ------- The Soyuz TM-30 descent times I gave were incorrect (multiple time zone conversion errors). Actual times: Jun 15 2124 UTC, undocking. 2352 UTC, deorbit burn. Jun 16 0044 UTC, landing. The Nadezhda launch from Plesetsk was northbound, not southbound; a bug in my groundtrack code led me astray. The launch flew north and west from Plesetsk over the Arctic. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Jun 6 0259 Gorizont Proton-K/Briz-M Baykonur LC81P Comsat 29A Jun 7 1319 TSX 5 Pegasus XL Vandenberg RW30/22 Science 30A Jun 24 0028 Ekspress A No. 3 Proton-K/DM-2M Baykonur LC200? Comsat 31A Jun 25 1150 Fengyun-2 CZ-3 Xichang LC1 Weather 32A Jun 28 1037 Nadezhda ) Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC132 Navsat 33A Tsinghua ) Tech 33B SNAP 1 ) Tech 33C Jun 30 1255 TDRS 8 Atlas 2A Canaveral SLC36A Comsat 34A Jun 30 2208 Sirius 1 Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur LC81P Comsat 35A Jul 4 2344 Kosmos-2371 Proton-K/DM-2? Baykonur LC200? Comsat 36A Jul 12 0456 Zvezda Proton-K Baykonur LC81L Station 37A Jul 14 0521 Echostar VI Atlas 2AS Canaveral SLC36B Comsat 38A Jul 15 1200 CHAMP ) Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC132 Science 39 MITA ) Science 39 Rubin ) Imaging 39 Jul 16 0917 GPS SVN 44 Delta 7925 Canaveral LC17A Navsat 40A Jul 16 1239 Samba ) Soyuz-Fregat Baykonur LC31 Science 41A Salsa ) Science 41B Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia Palmdale OMDP OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 1 STS-92 2000 Oct ISS 3A OV-104 Atlantis OPF Bay 3 STS-106 2000 Sep ISS 2A.2b OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 2 STS-97 2000 Nov? ISS 4A MLP-1 MLP-2/RSRM-75/ET-103 VAB Bay 1 STS-106 MLP-3/RSRM-76/ET-104 VAB Bay 3 STS-92 .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS6 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@cfa.harvard.edu | | USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/jsr.html | | Back issues: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/back | | Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@head-cfa.harvard.edu, (un)subscribe jsr | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'