Jonathan's Space Report No. 634 2010 Nov 19 Somerville, MA ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note: the launch database http://www.planet4589.org/space/lvdb has been updated with 1950s Soviet missile launches thanks to data kindly provided by Asif Siddiqi. Note to JSR readers in Japan: I'll be in Tokyo and Nara for a few days in early December; if anyone has access to records of the Kappa and Lambda rocket programs or the navigation data for the Hiten probe, please email me. Or if you'd just like to go out for some sushi, for that matter. Shuttle and Station ------------------- The Progress M-08M cargo ship was launched on Oct 27. Progress M-05M undocked from the Pirs module on Oct 25 at 1422 UTC and was deorbited over the Pacific on Nov 15. M-08M filled the empty slot on Pirs at 1636 UTC on Oct 30. Soyuz TMA-01M is docked at Poisk, TMA-19 at Rassvet, and Progress M-07M at Zvezda. Fyodor Yurchikin, in spacesuit Orlan-MK No. 4 and Oleg Skripochka, in Orlan-MK No. 5, emerged from the Pirs airlock on Nov 15 to carry out external maintenance tasks on the Russian segment as Russian EVA 26. They installed a workstation on Zvezda's starboard side, removed the Kontur experiment from Zvezda, installed experiments on Rassvet and Poisk, and removed a docking camera from Rassvet. They tried to reinstall the camera on the other end of Rassvet but insulation got in the way, so they had to abandon that task and bring the camera inside. Hatch open was at 1454 UTC and hatch close at 2122 UTC. Launch of STS-133 will occur no earlier than December. Ariane ------ Ariane vehicle 555 (flight V197) put two communications satellites in orbit on Oct 28. Eutelsat W3B is a 5370 kg Thales Spacebus satellite for the European operator Eutelsat; BSAT-3B is a smaller 2060 kg Lockheed Martin A2100A satellite for BSAT of Tokyo. On Oct 29, Eutelsat announced that W3B's propulsion system wasn't working and the satellite was declared a loss. Rumours on www.nasaspaceflight.com suggest an oxidizer leak may have occurred at spacecraft separation, so it's not yet clear if it's a spacecraft or launch vehicle failure. As of Nov 4 the satellite was in a 247 x 35825 km x 2.0 deg orbit and is to be abandoned there. By Nov 15, BSAT 3B was in a 35768 x 35806 km x 0.0 deg orbit on station at 109.7E. Beidou and Fengyun ------------------- China's di liu ke beidou daohang weixing (Beidou navigation satellite 6) was launched from Xichang on Oct 31 into a 192 x 35876 km x 20.5 deg transfer orbit. The di er ke fengyun sanhao (2nd Fengyun-3) weather satellite was launched from Taiyuan on Nov 5 into polar orbit. It is satellite B in batch 01 ("01 pi") of the FY-3 series. Meridian --------- Russia's third Meridian military communications satellite was launched on Nov 2. The Fregat upper stage placed it in a 966 x 39773 km x 62.8 deg orbit; an orbit maneuver on Nov 16 adjusted this to a semi-synchronous 961 x 39388 km. COSMO 4 ------- The Italian Defense Ministry's COSMO-SkyMed 4 X-band radar satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on Nov 6. It reached parking orbit at 0231 UTC and was released into a 620 x 632 km x 97.8 deg orbit at 0318 UTC. SkyTerra 1 ---------- The SkyTerra 1 satellite for LightSquared (formerly Mobile Satellite Ventures) was launched by a Proton on Nov 14 into a 5875 x 35662 km x 18.8 deg transfer orbit. The Boeing 702 GeoMobile class satellite with a 22-meter L-band reflector has a launch mass of 5400 kg. Deep Impact ----------- The Deep Impact (EPOXI) spacecraft flew 700 km from comet 103P/Hartley at around 1401 UTC on Nov 4. It revealed an active cometary nucleus with rough and smooth areas, and jets coming from the rough areas. WMAP ---- Following its final burns, WMAP is in a 1.00 x 1.09 AU x 1.5 deg solar orbit. As of Nov 5, it is still only 1.7 million km from Earth, just outside the L2 region. (Thanks to Dale Fink for orbital data). Suborbital launches ------------------- Russia tested four ballistic missiles on Oct 28-29. The Topol from Plesetsk, its naval cousin Bulava from the Dmitriy Donskoy submarine in the White Sea, and the R-29RM Sineva from the K-117 Bryansk sub in the Barents Sea were all targeted eastward on the Kura test range in Kamchatka, the standard aimpoint since the first Soviet ICBM launch in 1957. The R-29R Volna launched from the K-433 sub in the Sea of Okhotsk was targeted westward at the Chizha range in the Kanin Peninsula near the White Sea. On Oct 30, an Orbital Sciences Medium Range Target with a Castor 4B motor was launched from Kauai and intercepted by a Japanese Aegis ship using an SM-3 interceptor. The Missile That Wasn't ---------------------------------------- Video of a contrail seen by an LA helicopter news crew on Nov 9 (Nov 8 Pacific time) not far from the San Nicolas/Pt Mugu area was at first thought by many media outlets to be a missile launch, but it's now clear that it was just an aircraft contrail seen heading directly at the observer and illuminated by the setting sun. A discussion on flightaware.com suggests US Airways AWE 808 from Honolulu to Phoenix was the culprit. It is however perfectly true that there are missile launches in that area, some of them secret. Launches of NASA Black Brant IX rockets from San Nicolas Island in California carrying MARTI targets for the Missile Defense Agency's Airborne Laser testbed were until recently on public NASA schedules - those schedules have been removed from public access in the past few weeks. The most recent MARTI launch, which was publicly acknowledged, was on Oct 21. The MDA has also launched Scud missiles as targets from the ocean off Point Mugu. Launches of target missiles for the Aegis ship-based missile defense system being tested by the US and Japan have also occurred in the Pt Mugu area. Nevertheless, the consensus of analysts is that the particular contrail seen on Nov 9 was not a missile, and this is consistent with DoD statements on the matter. STAR rocket ----------- Does anyone know anything about the Supersonic Target Rocket (STAR) used at NATO's Aegean-Sea range for Patriot missile testing? Apparently it's some kind of Viper-Dart-class vehicle with an apogee in the 80-90 km range, but I haven't been able to find details of the motor or manufacturer. In Memoriam ----------- I deeply regret to report the deaths of Brian Marsden (1937-2010) and John Huchra (1948-2010). Brian was the air-traffic-controller for the Solar System (or, for those of you in the satellite tracking game, a one-man heliocentric JSPOC). At the helm of the Minor Planet Center and the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams for three decades, he coordinated registration of the discovery, naming and orbital tracking of minor planets, dwarf planets and comets, and warned the people of Earth of extraterrestrial threats to our world's survival. More controversially, he led the effort to demote beloved Pluto from major planet status. Brian was a genial, grandfatherly figure, always approachable, good-humoured and full of fascinating anecdotes. When I was a student at Cambridge, I heard an anecdote about him from Institute of Astronomy librarian David Dewhirst; as a teenager Brian, who lived in the Cambridge area, came into the library and asked to see the book of eclipses. DWD gave him the volume with the drawings of eclipse paths. No, said Brian, it was the volume with the numbers he wanted - calculations, not pretty pictures, were his interest. Calculational expertise remained Brian's hallmark throughout his career, after he moved from the real to the ersatz Cambridge via Oxford and Newhaven, and his method for handling comet orbits taking into account the rocket effect of cometary jets remains standard. Brian and his successor Gareth Williams took an interest in my efforts to record trajectories of artifical objects in heliocentric orbit, as it overlapped with their interest in not cataloging them as minor planets. I feel very lucky to have interacted with him professionally in even a small way. A fuller obit for Brian is at http://www.minorplanetcenter.org/mpec/K10/K10W10.html John Huchra was one of the giants of 20th-century cosmology. His mapping of the three-dimensional distribution of galaxies helped us figure out the scale and age of the universe, and revealed the large-scale clumpiness of voids and filaments that changed astronomers' view of the map of the universe and the story of galaxy formation. John was an astronomer's astronomer - personally observing many thousands of galaxies on the world's largest telescopes, but just as happy to train a graduate student to look at Saturn with the Harvard 9-inch refractor. John and Brian were modest, friendly, affable and unstuffy. We'll miss them. We also lost Allan Sandage recently; the direct successor to Hubble. I only met Allan a couple of times, so can't comment on him in detail, but it does seem like we're going through the end of an era. Table of Recent (orbital) Launches ---------------------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Oct 1 1100 Chang'e 2 Chang Zheng 3C Xichang Lunar probe 50A Oct 6 0049 SJ-6/4A ) Chang Zheng 4B Taiyuan ? 51A SJ-6/4B ) ? 51B Oct 7 2310 Soyuz TMA-01M Soyuz-FG Baykonur LC1 Spaceship 52A Oct 14 1853 Sirius XM-5 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC81/24 Radio 53A Oct 19 1710 Globalstar-2 M073 ) Soyuz-2-1a/Fregat Baykonur LC31 Comms 54F Globalstar-2 M074 ) Comms 54B Globalstar-2 M075 ) Comms 54E Globalstar-2 M076 ) Comms 54C Globalstar-2 M077 ) Comms 54D Globalstar-2 M079 ) Comms 54A Oct 27 1511 Progress M-08M Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 55A Oct 28 2151 Eutelsat W3B ) Ariane 5ECA Kourou ELA3 Comms 56A BSAT-3B ) Comms 56B Oct 31 1626 Beidou DW6 Chang Zheng 3C Xichang Nav 57A Nov 2 0059 Meridan Soyuz-2-1a/Fregat Plesetsk LC43/3 Comms 58A Nov 5 1837 Fengyun 3 (01)B Chang Zheng 4C Taiyuan Weather 59A Nov 6 0220 COSMO-SkyMed 4 Delta 7420-10 Vandenberg SLC2W Radar 60A Nov 14 1729 SkyTerra 1 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur Comms 61A Table of Recent (suborbital) Launches ---------------------------------- Date UT Payload/Flt Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission Apogee/km Oct 7 0310 RV x 3? Bulava TK-208, White Sea R&D 1000? Oct 21 1700 NASA 36.230DR Black Brant IX San Nicolas Target 100? Oct 27 1015 Mapheus-2 Nike Orion Kiruna Micrograv 153 Oct 28 0959 RV Topol Plesetsk Op Test 1000? Oct 28 1030 RV x 4? Sineva K-117, Barents Sea Op Test 1000? Oct 28 RV x 4? Volna K-433, Okhotsk Op Test 1000? Oct 29 0210? RV x 3? Bulava TK-208, White Sea R&D 1000? Oct 30 0306 MRT-9 Castor 4B Kauai Target 150? Oct 30 0309 Aegis KV SM-3 DDG-174, Pacific Interceptor 150? .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Somerville MA 02143 | inter : jcm@www.planet4589.org | | USA | jcm@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'