Jonathan's Space Report 

No. 131		1992 Oct 22
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Columbia was launched at 1709:40 UTC on Oct 22 from Launch Complex 39B
on mission STS-52 and reached orbit a little over 8 minutes later.  The
count was held at T-9 minutes for 2 hours because of weather constraints.
This is the 13th mission for orbiter 102. Atlantis arrived at the Rockwell
plant in Palmdale, California on Oct 18 for modifications. It will not
fly again until 1994. Final mission for this year will be Discovery's
STS-53 military mission, which will deploy a large classified satellite
in low orbit.

Aviation Week provided more details of the Kopernikus 3 satellite launch
profile, which uses three burns of the Delta second stage. This new
Delta launch profile is more complex than for any other geostationary
launch vehicle; for instance, the Ariane third stage burns only once,
and the Atlas Centaur makes two Centaur burns. In the new Delta profile,
the Delta enters a standard low orbit on its first burn. Two further
burns then raise the apogee and perigee respectively to over 1000 km;
only at this point does the third stage/spacecraft combination separate.
The third stage then fires to place the spacecraft in a geostationary
transfer orbit; this orbit has a high perigee but is otherwise normal.
The payload apogee engine can then be burned to achieve geostationary
orbit. This profile was used for the first time in August for the Satcom
C4 launch, and Kopernikus 3 was its second use. By Oct 16 the three main
apogee engine burns were complete and Kopernikus 3 was approaching its
target longitude of 33 degrees East. Erratum: DFS 3 Kopernikus was built
by Deutsche Aerospace, not Aerospatiale as I said in the last report.
The companies collaborated on the Spacebus 100 design.

A Molniya communications satellite was launched into 12 hour elliptical orbit
from Plesetsk on Oct 14. The Molniya launch vehicle consists of a Soyuz
with an extra fourth stage, the Blok-L; the fourth stage and payload are placed
in low orbit, and then the fourth stage ignites to place the payload in
elliptical orbit.

The spacecraft launched on Oct 8 from Plesetsk is confirmed as a Foton 
materials processing flight.

Six small Gonets-class comsats built by NPO Prikladnoi Mekhaniki of
Krasnoyarsk were launched by a three stage Tsiklon rocket (built
by the Ukranian company NPO Yuzhnoye) into 1400 km circular orbits
on Oct 20. This satellite system was previously used by the Soviet
military, but NPO-PM are now trying to sell the satellites commercially.


Current Shuttle Processing Status
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Orbiters               Location   Mission 
                                          
OV-102 Columbia        LEO           STS-52
OV-103 Discovery       OPF Bay 3     STS-53
OV-104 Atlantis        Palmdale      OMDP
OV-105 Endeavour       OPF Bay 1     STS-54
                                          
ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks                       
                                          
ML1/STS-53/ET          VAB Bay 3
ML2/STS-54	       VAB Bay 1
ML3/		       LC39B


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 |  Jonathan McDowell                 |  phone : (617) 495-7176                |
 |  Harvard-Smithsonian Center for    |                                        |
 |   Astrophysics                     |                                        |
 |  60 Garden St, MS4                 |                                        |
 |  Cambridge MA 02138                |  inter : mcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu      |
 |  USA                               |                                        |
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