Jonathan's Space Report No. 625 2010 Apr 6 Somerville, MA ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Station -------------------- The Soyuz TMA-16 ferry spaceship landed in Kazakhstan at 1124 UTC on Mar 18. Maksim Suraev and Jeff Williams returned to Earth aboard the spacecraft, completing Expedition 22. With the undocking of TMA-16, the remaining station crew of Oleg Kotov, TJ Creamer and Soichi Noguchi were deemed to become Expedition 23. Soyuz TMA-18 was launched at 0404 UTC on Apr 2 with additional Expedition 23 members commander Aleksandr Skvortsov, flight engineer 1 Mikhail Kornienko and flight engineer 2 Tracy Caldwell Dyson. The flight is ISS mission 22S; the spacecraft is production article 11F732A17 No. 228. TMA-18 docked with the Poisk module at 0525 on Apr 4. Soyuz TMA-17 remains docked to the Station at the Zarya nadir port, with the complex in a 342 x 350 km x 51.6 deg orbit following a Mar 24-25 reboost by the Progress M-04M tanker ship docked at the Zvezda port. Progress M-03M is docked to the Pirs module. With the forthcoming docking of Discovery there will be a full house at the Station with all active docking ports in use (not counting the reserve PMA-3). Space Shuttle OV-103 Discovery was launched at 1021 UTC on Apr 5 on flight STS-131, ISS mission 19A. Discovery reached a 57 x 227 km orbit at 1030 UTC and with the OMS-2 burn at 1100 UTC raised the perigee out of the atmosphere to 227 x 259 km x 51.6 deg. After a further burn (NC1) at 1307 UTC Discovery was in a 252 x 337 km orbit. Mission STS-131 will carry the Leonardo MPLM logistics module and the Lightweight MPESS carrier, to deliver cargo and supplies to the Station. A malfunction of Discovery's Ku-band antenna system means that there will be less live video than usual, but the problem will not prevent the Shuttle from completing its mission. The crew of Discovery are Commander Alan Poindexter, Pilot James Dutton, and Mission Specialists Richard Mastracchio, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson, Naoko Yamazaki, and Clayton Anderson. The thirteen astronauts of STS-131 and Expedition 23 equal the record for humans in space at one time with Caldwell-Dyson, Metcalf-Lindenburger, Wilson and Yamazaki breaking the record for the number of women in space at once, and Yamazaki and Noguchi marking the first time two Japanese astronauts have flown simultaneously. STS-131 cargo manifest ---------------------- Name Bay location Mass (kg,guess) Orbiter Docking System 1-2 1800 with EMU 3008, 3017 suits 260? APC/SPDU 4 port 18? ROEU 751A umbilical 7 stbd 127 MPLM Leonardo 7-12 12371 Lightweight MPESS Carrier 13 1764 RMS Sill 410 OBSS Sill 382 ----------------------------------------------------- Total 15332 kg Echostar XIV ------------ The Echostar XIV satellite took off from Baykonur on Mar 20. The Proton-M rocket put the upper stage package in a -490 x 170 km x 51.5 deg suborbital path. The first Briz-M burn reached a 173 x 173 km x 51.5 deg orbit. Later burns went to 270 x 4999 km x 50.3 deg, 430 x 35805 km x 49.1 deg, and 3121 x 35785 km x 26.7 deg. Echostar separated from the Briz-M at 0336 UTC on Mar 21. By Apr 4 it was on station at 138.6W in a 35784 x 35788 km x 0.1 deg geostationary orbit. Echostar XIV is a Loral LS-1300 satellite with a dry mass of 3223 kg, and 6379 kg fully fuelled. Solar panels are probably around 31.0 m span. Yaogan Weixing 9 ---------------- It is now clear that YW-9 is accompanied by two manueverable subsatellites, and is indeed presumably in some way analogous to the US ocean surveillance satellite triplets which used similar orbits. The three satellites are in a 1080 x 1100 km x 63.4 deg orbit. SDO --- SDO reached geosynchronous orbit at 102.9W on Mar 18. Orbit is now 35781 x 35790 km x 28.1 deg, and SDO's telescope doors are open to the Sun with all instruments undergoing checkout and so far looking healthy. Robert White ------------- Gen. Robert White died on 17 Mar at the age of 85. White was the first of the X-15 pilots to reach the 80 km level which I count as the boundary of space. On 1962 Jul 17 he flew X-15-3 from Delamar Dry Lake, Nevada to Edwards Air Force Base on a 10-minute suborbital flight reaching 96 km altitude. Cassini ------- The Cassini spacecraft made a 7461 km flyby of Titan at 1550 UTC on Apr 5, and is on course to pass Dione at an altitude of 500 km at 0516 UTC on Apr 7. The Titan flyby raised the height of Cassini's orbit from 114700 x 2383000 km x 0.37 deg to 152400 x 2646000 km x 0.37 deg. Suborbital flights ------------------- MAXUS 8 was launched from ESRANGE, Kiruna, Sweden on Mar 26 lofting an 807 kg European Space Agency microgravity payload to 700 km. The rocket was launched by Rymbdbolaget (the Swedish Space Corp.) and Astrium. NASA 12.067GT was launched from Wallops Island on Mar 27 to test the new Terrier/Improved Malemute sounding rocket. Two student cubesats, Frontier I and CP-1U, were carried on the suborbital flight. Launch was from the 50K launcher at Launch Area 1 and the flight reached 270 km. The Indian Prithvi missile and its Dhanush naval variant were tested within a few minutes of each other at India's Integrated Test Range in Orissa on Mar 27. Later the same day the larger Agni I ballistic missile, derived from the first stage of India's original Satellite Launch Vehicle-3, was also tested from ITR into the Bay of Bengal. Table of Recent (orbital) Launches ---------------------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Mar 1 2119 Kosmos-2459 ) Proton-M/DM-2 Baykonur Navigation 07A Kosmos-2460 ) Navigation 07C Kosmos-2461 ) Navigation 07B Mar 4 2357 GOES 15 Delta 4M+(4,2) Canaveral SLC37B Weather 08A Mar 5 0455 Yaogan Weixing 9) Chang Zheng 4C Jiuquan Sigint? 09A YW-9 subsat 1 ) Sigint? 09B YW-9 subsat 2 ) Sigint? 09C Mar 20 1826 Echostar XIV Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC200/39 Comms 10A Apr 2 0404 Soyuz TMA-18 Soyuz-FG Baykonur LC1 Spaceship 11A Apr 5 1021 Discovery (STS-131) Space Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 12A Table of Recent (suborbital) Launches ---------------------------------- Date UT Payload/Flt Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission Apogee/km Mar 2 0725 SSC REXUS 7 Improved Orion Esrange Aeron/Tech 83 Mar 4 0450 Sineva RV-1) Sineva K-114, Barents Op. Test 1000? Sineva RV-2) Sineva RV-3) Sineva RV-4) Mar 4 1015 SSC REXUS 8 Improved Orion Esrange Tech 88 Mar 26 1343 SSC MAXUS 8 Castor 4B Esrange Micrograv 700 Mar 27 0014 RV Dhanush INS-P51, Chandipur Test 100? Mar 27 0018 RV Prithvi Chandipur Test 100? Mar 27 1409 NASA 12.067GT Terrier Malemute Wallops LA1 Test 270 Mar 27 1937 Agni RV Agni I Chandipur Test 300 .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Somerville MA 02143 | inter : jcm@host.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: mail majordomo@host.planet4589.org, (un)subscribe jsr | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'