Jonathan's Space Report No. 403 1999 Jul 15 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ STS-93/Chandra --------------- 4 days to launch... Chandra is now in Columbia's payload bay at pad 39B. We're looking forward to finally launching this thing just after midnight on Monday night. The Columbia crew will deploy Chandra in low orbit. The two IUS solid motors will fire to place it in elliptical orbit, and then Chandra's own liquid propulsion system will make several burns to raise the orbit to 10000 km x 140000 km. We'll spend a few days checking out the spacecraft and the instruments, and about 20 days after launch we'll pop open the sunshade door and take a peek at the quasar PKS 0637-752, a nice point source that we can focus up on. Once everything's in focus and aligned, we'll take our official first light image of the supernova remnant Cas A. With the combined spatial and spectral resolution of the ACIS imager, we can get information on the physical conditions and chemical composition in different parts of the supernova remnant, and compare detailed features with those seen in optical and radio images. Fortunately, my first duty scientist shift isn't till three days after launch, so I get to go down and watch. I'll be in the Cape Canaveral area for a few days starting Jul 18. Any readers in that area who'd like to meet up, send me email or meet me around 5:30pm Jul 19 in the lobby of the Cocoa Beach Hilton. Pete Conrad ----------- Charles Conrad, Jr., the third human to walk on another world, died July 9 in California from injuries recieved in a motorcycle accident. Recent Launches --------------- Krunichev's Proton-K launch vehicle suffered its first failure in six years on Jul 5 (there have been upper stage failures since then, but not failures of the Proton itself). The Proton was launched from Baykonur at 1332 UTC. At 4min 37 seconds into flight, one of the four second stage engines failed catastrophically, and the second stage exploded. The remainder of the vehicle survived the explosion but broke up about 45 seconds later. Debris landed near Karaganda. The Proton second stage has four KB Khivavtomatiki RD-0210 engines, burning unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine (UDMH) and nitrogen tetroxide. This Proton-K carried a Russian Defense Ministry comsat. Gran' No. 45 was built by NPO Prikladnoi Mekhaniki and would have been named Raduga if it had reached orbit (info from Aleksandr Zheleznyakov). The Gran' series are the oldest Russian geostationary comsats, first launched in 1975. Instead of the usual Energiya Blok-DM class stage, this mission carried the Krunichev Briz-M upper stage on its first test flight. T AP reports the payload as a 'Raduga-1'. This is incorrect - the Raduga-1 (Globus) series are different from the Raduga (Gran') satellites. Year Launches Proton Failure Upper Stage failure 1992 8 0 0 1993 6 1 0 1994 13 0 0 1995 7 0 0 1996 8 0 2 1997 9 0 1 1998 7 0 0 1999 6 1 0 A Molniya-3 comsat was launched from Plesetsk on Jul 8. The launch was from one of the 3 active R-7 class pads at Plesetsk (LC16/pad 2, LC43/pad 3, LC43/pad 4) and used the 8K78M launch vehicle, consisting of the 11S59 core packet, the 11S510 Blok I third stage, and the Blok-ML upper stage. The Blok ML and the payload were placed in a 62.8 degree low parking orbit and then the ML fired to deliver the payload to a 12-hour operational orbit. The payload is the 52nd Molniya-3 to be launched and is probably Molniya-3 11F637 No. 63, although the satellites are not launched in production order. The Molniya-3 is built by NPO PM of Zheleznogorsk, and provides communications and TV relay for Russian military and civil agencies. Four Loral/Alenia Globalstar satellites were launched on Jul 10 by a Boeing Delta 7420-10. Globalstar satellites M032, M030 (on the upper dispenser tier), M035 and M051 (on the lower dispenser tier) were placed in orbit after the Delta stage 2's second burn. 28 Globalstar satellites have now reached orbit. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Jun 5 0721 Starshine - OV-103, LEO Education 30B Jun 10 1348 Globalstar 52) Delta 7420-10 Canaveral SLC17B Comsat 31A Globalstar 49) 31B Globalstar 25) 31C Globalstar 47) 31D Jun 11 1715 Iridium 14A ) CZ-2C/SD Taiyuan Comsat 32A Iridium 21A ) Comsat 32B Jun 18 0149 Astra 1H Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur LC81L Comsat 33A Jun 20 0215 QuikScat Titan 23G Vandenberg SLC4W R/Sensing 34A Jun 24 1544 FUSE Delta 7320-10 Canaveral SLC17A Astronomy 35A Jul 5 1332 Raduga Proton-K/BrizM Baykonur LC81P Comsat F02 Jul 8 0846 Molniya-3 Molniya-M Plesetsk Comsat 36A Jul 10 0845 Globalstar 32) Delta 7420-10 Canaveral SLC17B Comsat 37A Globalstar 30) Comsat 37B Globalstar 35) Comsat 37C Globalstar 51) Comsat 37D Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia LC39B STS-93 Jul 20 OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 1 STS-103 Oct 14 OV-104 Atlantis OPF Bay 3 STS-101 Dec 2 OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 2 STS-99 Sep 18 MLP1/RSRM-69/ET-99/OV-102 LC39B STS-93 MLP2/ MLP3/RSRM-71? VAB Bay 3 STS-99 .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'