Jonathan's Space Report No. 196 1994 May 19 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ MIR --- The Progress M-22 cargo ship fired its engine around May 15 to raise the orbit of the Mir orbital station from 381 x 400 km to 398 x 399 km. Maxim Tarasenko reports that the launch of the replacement cargo ship, Progress M-23, is now due on May 22. LAUNCHES -------- Disaster befell the Clementine 1 probe on May 7. The on board computer erroneously told the attitude control system to fire its thrusters and depleted the attitude control propellant tanks. Although the main propulsion system still has fuel, controllers can't point the engine in the right direction so that's not much help. The flight to (1620) Geographos and to (3551) 1983RD (not unnumbered as claimed in JSR195, sorry Gareth!) appears impossible. Clementine did successfully complete its lunar mapping mission and the sensors are still operational. It is currently in a highly elliptical orbit around the Earth. The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization manages the Clementine project and the Naval Research Lab built and operates the spacecraft. Launch of the USAF Rome Lab's P91-A (STEP 2) satellite was aborted just before launch last week. Problems were noticed in the Pegasus booster as the B-52 carrier aircraft was flying above the Point Arguello Warning Area launch site over the Pacific. The B-52 returned to Edwards AFB with the Pegasus still attached. I don't know if a new launch date has yet been set. STEP 2 carries SIDEX, a signal indentification experiment. The ALEXIS EUV astronomy satellite was launched on a Pegasus flight last year. Damage during launch meant that controllers didn't know which way the satellite was pointing. The Los Alamos science team and the Aero Astro Inc manufacturers have now come up with a way to determine the satellite's orientation, which has enabled them to make the first useful sky picture from the satellite's data. The picture shows the Moon and the soft x-ray source HZ 43. HZ 43 is a white dwarf star from the Humason-Zwicky catalog and was the first EUV galactic source identified, during the Apollo-Soyuz misison in 1975. The new picture means that there's a very good chance the rest of the data obtained by Alexis over the last year will eventually be usable. Information Wanted ------------------ Trivia question of the week: can anyone find out for me what solid motor was used to raise the orbit of the German IRM satellite, launched in 1984 as part of the AMPTE project? Recent Launches --------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Mar 22 0454 Progress M-22 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 19A Apr 9 1105 Endeavour Space Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 20A Space Radar Lab Apr 11 0749 Kosmos-2275 ) Proton/DM2 Baykonur LC81 Navigation 21A Kosmos-2276 ) Navigation 21B Kosmos-2277 ) Navigation 21C Apr 13 0604 GOES 8 Atlas Centaur I Canaveral LC36B Weather 22A Apr 23 0802 Kosmos-2278 Zenit-2 Baykonur LC45 SIGINT 23A Apr 26 0214 Kosmos-2279 Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC133 Navsat 24A Apr 28 1714 Kosmos-2280 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC31 Recon 25A May 3 1555 USA-103 Titan Centaur Canaveral LC41 SIGINT 26A May 4 0000 SROSS C2 ASLV Sriharikota Science 27A May 9 0247 MSTI-2 Scout G-1 Vandenberg SLC5 Technology 28A Reentries --------- Mar 15 SEDS 2 end mass Reentered Mar 18 Columbia Landed at KSC Mar 23 Progress M-21 Deorbited Apr 20 Endeavour Landed at Edwards AFB May 8 SEDS 2 deployer Reentered Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 2 STS-65 OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 3 STS-64 OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-68 ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/RSRM-40 VAB Bay 3 STS-68 ML2/ ML3/RSRM-39/ET VAB Bay 1 STS-65 .-----------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS4 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@urania.harvard.edu | | USA | | '-----------------------------------------------------------------------------' ,