Jonathan's Space Report
No. 777 draft 2020 Mar 10 Somerville, MA
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International Space Station
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Expedition 62 continues.
The Cygnus NG-12 cargo ship S.S. Alan Bean was deorbited over the Pacific on Mar 17;
the last telemetry signal was at 2316:56 UTC.
The Dextre robot arm removed the Bartolomeo experiment platform Dragon CRS-20's trunk on Mar 25.
Bartolomeo was attached to the Columbus module on Apr 2.
Ariane
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Last issue I inadvertently omitted discussion of the Ariane launch on Feb 18.
On Feb 18 at 2218 UTC Ariane vehicle L5111, flight VA252, took off from Kourou and headed
to a 6 degree inclination geotransfer orbit. This was the third launch of the new Ariane 5ECA+
variant with an ESC-D upper stage, stretched by 4 cm relative to the older ESC-A allowing it
to carry 360 kg of additional propellant. The earlier 5ECA+ flights were VA249 and VA251.
The upper payload was JCSAT-17 for Sky Perfect JSAT. with a launch mass
of 5857 kg. Unlike previous JCSAT satellites, this one carries a large
18-metre-dia Harris S-band antenna on a long boom. The S-band system
supports communications for disasters and other high traffic events. The
satellite, using a Lockheed Martin A2100 buss, also carries the usual
Ku-band and C-band communications payloads.
The lower payload is GEO-Kompsat 2B, for South Korea's aerospace
institute KARI. In the launch table I had accidentally labelled
GEO-Kompsat 2B as "Comms" but it is a weather/remote sensing satellite,
not a communications satellite. GEO-Kompsat 2B, with a launch mass of
3379 kg, carries the GOCI-II ocean color imager and the GEMS
spectrometer. GEMS, built by Ball Aerospace, is a visible/UV spectrometer
which gives hourly time resolution measurements of ozone and pollutants in the
Asia-Pacific region.
OSIRIS-REX
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The OSIRIS-REX space program remains in orbit around Bennu. It began the
Recon B mission phase in January, with 620m altitude flybys of sites
Nightingale and Osprey on Jan 22 and Feb 13 respectively. The Recon C
phase is now underway. On Mar 3 at 1900 UTC the probe departed from its
1.4 km altitude orbit to perform a `swoop' over the Nightingale
candidate landing site. It passed only 251.6 metres above Bennu's
surface at 2129:48 UTC Mar 3 and reentered the 1.4 km orbit with a burn
at 0005 UTC Mar 4. A 250m pass of site Osprey is expected in May.
(Thanks to Erin Morton for the Mar 3-4 details).
Starlink
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Starlink-1220, one of the satellites on the 5th Starlink launch, was
deorbited on Mar 9 from a 324 x 361 km orbit.
As of Mar 10 there were 20 sats from launch 3 and 39 sats from launch 4
undergoing orbital plane drift at the 350 km `pause' altitude, with 40
of the launch 5 satellites reaching or paused at that altitude.
On Mar 11 to 13 all 99 of these sats abruptly began raising their orbits
again, without waiting for their target orbital planes to be reached.
I speculate that the plane-relocation process requires extra personnel
and the abrupt orbit raising towards the operational 550 km orbit is
a contingency activity in response to COVID19.
On Mar 18 SpaceX launched the sixth batch of satellites, A single
burn of the upper stage placed the satellites in a 209 x 366 km orbit.
The Falcon 9 first stage, on its fifth flight, suffered one engine
shutdown during ascent, and failed to land on the droneship on descent.
This did not affect the successful orbit insertion of the second
stage. The second stage was deorbited over the eastern Pacific.
Recent observations by Richard Cole (Res.Notes.AAS, in press) and
Tregloan-Reed et al (arxiv2003.07251) show that in the days after
reaching its operational orbit at the beginning of March, Starlink-1130
(Darksat) was indeed about a magnitude fainter than other Starlink
satellites, indicating that the special coating has been reasonably
successful.
OneWeb
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34 more OneWeb satellites were launched from Baykonur on Mar 21 into a 440 x 475 km parking
orbit. The satellites will later raise their orbits to over 1000 km altitude.
CZ-7A
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The first Chang Zheng 7A failed to reach orbit on Mar 16, reportedly due to a failure of the
third stage's first burn, or possibly due to a second stage explosion.
Planned parking orbit was 195 x 195 km x 20 deg; a second burn of the third stage would
have delivered CAST/Beijing's XJS-6 (Xinjishu Yanzheng 6, New Technology
Validation Satellite) to geotransfer orbit. My guess is XJS-6 was
something similar to a DFH-5 communications satellite, of order 5 tonnes
mass. The CZ-7A combines the earlier CZ-7 vehicle with a hydrogen/oxygen
upper stage from the CZ-3 series.
Glonass
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Russia launched a Soyuz-2-1B from Plesetsk on Mar 16. The Fregat No. 112-11 upper stage put the Uragan-M No. 760
(codename Kosmos-2545) navigation satellite in orbit. The satellite will form part of the GLONASS system,
probably replacing satellite no. 735.
YG-30
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The sixth group of three Yaogan-30 satellites were launched on Mar 24. The YG-30 satellites
are thought to be for signals intelligence.
AEHF 6
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A United Launch Alliance Atlas V, flight AV-086, flew from Cape Canaveral on Mar 26,
After the second Centaur burn, to geotransfer orbit, the TDO 2 tracking calibration satlelite was
ejected from the Centaur aft bulkhead. A further burn will raise perigee, putting the AEHF 6
communications satellite in transfer orbit for the US Space Force.
Table of Recent Orbital Launches
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Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. Catalog Perigee Apogee Incl Notes
Mar 7 0450 Dragon CRS-20 Falcon 9 Canaveral SLC40 Cargo 16A S45341 204 x 384 x 51.6
Mar 9 1155 Beidou DW 54 Chang Zheng 3B Xichang Nav 17A S45344 231 x 35775 x 28.4
Mar 16 1334 XJS 6 Chang Zheng 7A Wenchang LC201 Tech F02 F01450 -2000?x 200?x 20.0
Mar 16 1828 Kosmos-2545 Soyuz-2-1B/Fregat Plesetsk LC43/4 Nav 18A S45358 19131x 19155 x 64.8
Mar 18 1216 Starlink 1207 ) Falcon 9 Kennedy SLC39A Comms 19A 209 x 366 x 53.0
Starlink 1213 )
Starlink 1255-1260 )
Starlink 1262-1268 )
Starlink 1272-1293 )
Starlink 1295-1313 )
Starlink 1316-1319 )
Mar 21 1707 OneWeb 0018 ) Soyuz-2-1B/Fregat Baykonur Comms 20A S45424 433 x 463 x 87.4
OneWeb 0019 )
OneWeb 0027 )
OneWeb 0029 )
OneWeb 0031 )
OneWeb 0034 )
OneWeb 0037 )
OneWeb 0042 )
OneWeb 0046 )
OneWeb 0050 )
OneWeb 0055 )
OneWeb 0060 )
OneWeb 0061 )
OneWeb 0063 )
OneWeb 0064 )
OneWeb 0066-0069)
OneWeb 0080-0082)
OneWeb 0085-0088)
OneWeb 0090 )
OneWeb 0092-0096)
OneWeb 0098 )
Mar 24 0343 Yaogan-30 06 zu 01 xing ) Chang Zheng 2C Xichang Sigint 21A S45460 591 x 602 x 35.0
Yaogan-30 06 zu 02 xing ) Sigint 21B S45461 591 x 602 x 35.0
Yaogan-30 06 zu 03 xing ) Sigint 21C S45462 591 x 602 x 35.0
Mar 26 2018 AEHF 6 ) Atlas V 551 Canaveral SLC41 Comms 22B S4546 11366 x 35311 x 13.7
TDO 2 ) Calib 22A S45464 201 x 35459 x 26.5
Table of Recent Suborbital Launches
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The Zulfiqar missile launched on Mar 28 by the Houthis in Yemen is a
liquid propellant Scud-type vehicle similar to the Burkan, and is not
related to Iran's solid fuel rocket of the same name. I am denoting it
as Zulfiqar (YE) to maintain the distinction.
Date UT Payload/Flt Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission Apogee/km Target
Feb 12 USN RVs Trident D5LE USS Maine, Pacific Test 1000? Wake Island
Feb 16 USN RVs Trident D5LE USS Maine, Pacific Test 1000? Wake Island
Mar 20 0830 C-HGB STARS Kauai LC42 Test 500? Pacific
Mar 28 2020? HE RV Zulfiqar (YE) Sadah? Weapon 150? Riyadh
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| Jonathan McDowell | |
| Somerville MA 02143 | inter : planet4589 at gmail |
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