Jonathan's Space Report No. 297 1996 Aug 29 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Mir --------------- Soyuz TM-24 docked with Mir's front port at 1450:21 UTC on Aug 19. Soyuz TM-23 is docked at the rear. Aboard Mir are EO-22 commander Valeriy Korzun, EO-22 flight engineer Aleksandr Kaleri, EO-21 commander Yuriy Onufrienko, EO-21 flight engineer Yuriy Usachyov, EO-21 cosmonaut-researcher Shannon Lucid, and EO-22 cosmonaut-researcher Claudie Andre-Deshays. Mir is in a 375 x 390 km x 51.6 deg orbit; the Progress M-32 cargo ship, flying separately, is in a 375 x 392 km x 51.6 deg orbit. OV-104 Atlantis and the STS-79 stack were rolled out to pad 39A on Aug 20 in preparation for launch no earlier than Sep 12, with Sep 14 the current plan. Atlantis will dock with the Mir station. Meanwhile, the old STS-79 stack is disassembled; stacking for STS-80 is due to begin soon but according to the latest Shuttle status report, managers are still discussing which booster set to use. Recent Launches --------------- The Fast Auroral Snapshot Explorer (FAST), a NASA-GSFC Small Explorer (SMEX) mission, was launched on Aug 21 into an elliptical polar orbit by an Orbital Sciences Corp. Pegasus XL rocket. The L-1011 carrier plane took off from Vandeberg at 0850 UTC and dropped the Pegasus at 0947 UTC. The satellite was acquired in orbit by the Madrid ground station at 1118 UTC. FAST carries antennae to measure the electric field, magnetometers to study the magnetic field, and electrostatic analysers and the TEAMS time-of-flight/energy/angle mass spectrograph to study electrons and ions. FAST will study particle acceleration processes with much higher time resolution than previously attempted. Orbit of FAST is 351 x 4165 km x 83.0 deg. Errata: ADEOS launch time is 1996 Aug 17 at 0153 UTC; I mistyped the name of Progress M-32 in the launch table. I referred to the Korzun crew as EO-24 last week - oops! It is EO-22, launched aboard Soyuz TM-24. Zhongxing 7 was left in a 200 x 17227 km orbit at 27.2 deg inclination when the CZ-3 third stage shut down 48 seconds too early. The HS-376 payload has a Star 30 solid apogee motor which could be fired to raise the orbit, but it probably doesn't have enough fuel to make it to geostationary. ADEOS 1 has a problem with one of its 20N orbit adjust thrusters, and the initial orbital adjustment is being made with the help of smaller thrusters over the period Aug 24 to Sep 8. Initial orbit was 799 x 820 km x 98.6 deg; on Aug 29 the orbit was 800 x 810 km x 98.6 deg. The Interbol-2 satellite was launched on Aug 29 from Plesetsk. It is a Prognoz-M2 class satellite also known as Interbol Auroral Probe. The Molniya-M rocket took off at 0522:00 UTC on Aug 29. The four strapons that make up the first stage separated at 0524, the second stage (Blok-A core) separated at 0526:52, and the third stage shut down at approximately 0530:55 UTC. At 0531:00 UTC the Blok-I third stage separated from the Blok-2BL fourth stage carrying Interbol, leaving it in a 244 x 1192 km x 62.8 deg orbit. One second later, the MU-SAT (MICROSATELITE) payload was ejected. MU-SAT is a small experimental payload from the Instituto Universitario Aeronautico de Cordoba, Argentina. This is the second Argentine satellite, following the amateur radio LUSAT. At 0628 UTC (scheduled), the Blok-2BL stage began its burn and at 0631 UTC it separated, leaving the Interbol-2 (Prognoz-M2 article SO-M2 No. 513, built by NPO Lavochkin) in an elliptical orbit of 775 x 19210 km x 62.6 deg. Prognoz (SO-M) satellites are normally placed in much more elliptical orbits with apogees around 200000 km, but this mission is intended to study the aurora rather than the magnetosphere and solar wind. The S2-A Magion-5 subsatellite, built in the Czech Republic, was due to separate from Interbol-2 to provide spatially resolved auroral measurements. Confirmation of Magion-5 separation is still awaited. Kosmodrom Baykonur ------------------ Sergey Voevodin reports that the designation of Baykonur is 5-y Gosudarstvennyy Ispytatelnyy Kompleks Ministerstva Oborony, 5th State Test Complex of the Ministry of Defence. Its acronym is 5-y GIK or GIK-5, but note that here GIK stands for Kompleks, not Kosmodrom as in the case of 1-y GIK at Plesetsk. Table of Recent Launches ------------------------ Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Jul 2 0748 TOMS-EP Pegasus XL Vandenberg Rem.sens. 37A Jul 3 0031 USA 125 Titan 404 Canaveral LC40 Comsat? 38A Jul 3 1047 Apstar 1A Chang Zheng 3 Xichang Comsat 39A Jul 9 2224 Arabsat 2A ) Ariane 44L Kourou ELA2 Comsat 40A Turksat 1C ) Comsat 40B Jul 16 0050 Navstar SVN 40 Delta 7925 Canaveral LC17B Navsat 41A Jul 25 1242 UHF F7 Atlas 2 Canaveral LC36A Comsat 42A Jul 31 2006 Progress M-32 Soyuz-U Baykonur Cargo 43A Aug 8 2249 Italsat F2 ) Ariane 44L Kourou ELA2 Comsat 44A Telecom 2D ) Comsat 44B Aug 14 2221 Molniya-1T Molniya-M Plesetsk Comsat 45A Aug 17 0153 ADEOS ) H-II Tanegashima Y Rem.sens. 46A JAS-2 ) Comsat 46B Aug 17 1318 Soyuz TM-24 Soyuz-U Baykonur Spaceship 47A Aug 18 1027 Zhongxing 7 Chang Zheng 3 Xichang Comsat 48A Aug 21 0947 FAST Pegasus XL Vandenberg Auroral 49A Aug 29 0522 Interbol-2 ) Molniya-M Plesetsk LC43 Auroral Magion 5 ) Microsat ) Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 1 STS-80 Oct 31 OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-82 Feb 13 OV-104 Atlantis LC39A STS-79 Sep 14 OV-105 Endeavour Palmdale OMDP ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/RSRM-56/ET-81/OV-104 LC39A STS-79 ML2/ VAB Bay 1 ML3/ .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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/QEDT/jcm/space/jsr/jsr.html | | Back issues: ftp://sao-ftp.harvard.edu/pub/jcm/space/news/news.* | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'