Jonathan's Space Report No. 471 2002 Jan 26 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Station -------------------- Expedition 4 crewmembers Walz and Onufrienko made a spacewalk from the Pirs module on Jan 14. Depress was around 2050 UTC, with hatch open at 2059 UTC and egress around 2110 UTC. The astronauts moved the Strela-2 crane from PMA-1 to Pirs and installed it there; the Strela-1 crane was already functional on Pirs. They also installed an amateur radio antenna on Zvezda. On Jan 15 at about 0254 UTC the crew jettisoned two pairs of Orlan spacesuit gloves and a pair of towels used to wipe the spaceuits down, because of concerns about contamination from Zvezda thrusters. They reentered Pirs at 0255 UTC, with hatch close at 0302 UTC and repressurization above 50 mbar at about 0304 UTC. A second spacewalk was made by Bursch and Onufrienko on Jan 25. They installed plume deflectors around the Zvezda thrusters and set up some exposure experiments. The Pirs airlock was depressurized probably about 1510 UTC, with hatch open at 1519 UTC; hatch close was at 2118 UTC and repressurization began at 2120 UTC. The next Shuttle mission is STS-109, which will install new equipment on the Hubble Space Telescope. Recent Launches --------------- Lockheed Martin's Titan 4B-38 was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0030 UTC on Jan 16. The Titan core stage shut down 9 min after launch on a suborbital trajectory, and separated from the upper stage, Centaur TC-19. TC-19 made three burns to parking orbit, geostationary transfer orbit, and finally geostationary orbit. It then released the payload, the US Air Force communications satellite Milstar Flt-5. Built by Lockheed Martin/Sunnyvale, Milstar provides secure communications in the EHF, SHF and UHF bands and has a mass of about 4550 kg. Flt-5 will be stationed over European longitudes. Arianespace launched an Ariane 42L on Jan 23 from Kourou. The rocket placed the Insat 3C satellite in geostationary transfer orbit. Insat 3C is an Indian communications satellite and has a mass of 1050 kg empty, 2750 kg fuelled. It carries 30 C-band and 2 S-band transponders. Galileo made a 102 km flyby of Io on Jan 17 at 1409 UTC. Unfortunately the harsh radiation environment made the spacecraft safemode at 1341 UTC; it was reactivated at 0400 UTC on Jan 18. Closest approach to Jupiter was 322000 km at 1622 UTC on Jan 17. Galileo is now on its way back to an apoapsis of about 25 million km, and will fall back in to flyby Jupiter V (Amalthea) on Nov 5. The EUVE observatory is approaching reentry. On Jan 26 it was in a 227 x 233 km x 28.4 deg orbit. It was launched in June 1992 into a 514 x 528 km orbit. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Dec 1 1804 Kosmos-2380 ) Proton-K/DM2 Baykonur Navsat 53C Kosmos-2381 ) Navsat 53B Kosmos-2382 ) Navsat 53A Dec 5 2219 Endeavour ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39B Spaceship 54A Raffaello ) Dec 7 1507 Jason 1 ) Delta 7920-10 Vandenberg SLC2W Science 55A TIMED ) Science 55B Dec 10 1719 Meteor-3M ) Zenit-2 Baykonur LC45 Weather 56A Badr B ) Imaging 56 Maroc-Tubsat) Imaging 56 Kompas ) Science 56 Reflector ) Technology 56 Dec 21 0400 Kosmos-2383 Tsiklon-2 Baykonur LC90 Siginit 57A Dec 28 0324 Kosmos-2384 ) Tsiklon-3 Plesetsk LC32 Comms relay 58 Kosmos-2385 ) Comms relay 58 Kosmos-2386 ) Comms relay 58 Gonets-D1 ) Comms relay 58 Gonets-D1 ) Comms relay 58 Gonets-D1 ) Comms relay 58 Jan 16 0030 Milstar FLT-5 Titan Centaur Canaveral SLC40 Comms 01A Jan 23 2347 Insat 3C Ariane 42L Kourou ELA2 Comms 02A Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia VAB STS-109 2002 Feb 28 HST SM-3B OV-103 Discovery VAB Maintenance OV-104 Atlantis OPF Bay 2? STS-110 2002 Apr 4 ISS 8A OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1? STS-111 2002 May 2 ISS UF-2 .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'