Jonathan's Space Report No. 346 1998 Jan 11 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Mir --------------- Solov'yov and Vinogradov made a 3h 6min spacewalk on Jan 9 to recover some equipment and begin repairs to the leaking Kvant-2 airlock hatch; they found a bolt on the hatch was not tight, causing a 10-mm gap. Launch of STS-89 to Mir is scheduled for Jan 22. Crew is Terrence Wilcutt, Joe Edwards, James Reilly, Michael Anderson, Andy Thomas and Bonnie Dunbar (all of NASA) and Salizhan Sharipov (Russian Air Force). Thomas will replace David Wolf aboard Mir. Recent Launches --------------- Lunar Prospector was launched on Jan 7. The first Athena-2 launch vehicle took off from LC46 at Spaceport Florida, the commercial spaceport at the Cape Canaveral site. Lunar Prospector carries a gamma ray spectrometer and other instruments (alpha particle spectrometer, magnetometer, electron reflectometer, neutron spectrometer) to study the composition of the lunar surface. It also carries a Celestis capsule with some of the ashes of lunar scientist Gene Shoemaker. LP is a Lockheed Martin LM100 class satellite. The LM100 is a small spin stablized bus; in its LP configuration it has a triangular structure (half an Iridium bus) surrounded by a cylindrical solar panel shell. The first stage of Athena-2 is a Thiokol Castor 120 solid motor, derived from the Peacekeeper ICBM first stage. The second stage is another Castor 120, and the third stage is a UTC Orbus 21D solid motor. A fourth stage, although not formally counted as such, is the lower-thrust Primex OAM (Orbit Adjust Module) which performs final orbit insertion and trim burns. The OAM entered orbit with the payload which then separated. The payload consisted of the LP probe and its TLI stage, which fired its Star 37 solid motor on the first orbit to place LP on a translunar trajectory. LP fired its own hydrazine propulsion system and entered a 71 x 8500 km x 89.7 deg lunar orbit on Jan 11. A Boeing Delta 7925 launched the Skynet 4D communications satellite for the UK Ministry of Defense on Jan 10. Skynet 4D is built by Matra Marconi Space/Stevenage using the old ECS bus. The 8 Orbcomm satellites launched in December, A1 to A8, were flight models FM-5 to FM-12 respectively. EarthWatch lost contact with the EarlyBird satellite on Dec 28. Table of Recent Launches ------------------------ Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Dec 2 2252 JCSAT-5 ) Ariane 44P Kourou ELA2 Comsat 75A Equator-S ) Space sci 75B Dec 2 2310 Astra 1G Proton Baykonur Comsat 76A Dec 3 1215 AERCam/Sprint OV-102, LEO Technology Dec 8 0716 Iridium 42 ) CZ-2C/SD Taiyuan Comsat 77A Iridium 44 ) Comsat 77B Dec 8 2352 Galaxy 8I Atlas 2AS Canaveral LC36B Comsat 78A Dec 9 0717 Kosmos-2347 Tsiklon-2 Baykonur LC90 Recon 79A Dec 15 1540? Kosmos-2348 Soyuz-U Plesetsk Recon 80A Dec 17 0737 X-Mir Inspector Progress,LEO Technology 58D Dec 20 0845 Progress M-37 Soyuz-U Baykonur Cargo 81A Dec 20 1316 Iridium 45 ) Delta 7920 Vandenberg SLC2 Comsat 82A Iridium 46 ) Comsat 82B Iridium 47 ) Comsat 82C Iridium 48 ) Comsat 82D Iridium 49 ) Comsat 82E Dec 22 0016 Intelsat 804 Ariane 42L Kourou ELA2 Comsat 83A Dec 23 1911 Orbcomm FM5 ) Pegasus XL/H Wallops Comsat 84F Orbcomm FM6 ) Comsat 84G Orbcomm FM7 ) Comsat 84H Orbcomm FM8 ) Comsat 84A Orbcomm FM9 ) Comsat 84E Orbcomm FM10) Comsat 84B Orbcomm FM11) Comsat 84C Orbcomm FM12) Comsat 84D Dec 24 1332 EarlyBird Start-1 Svobodniy Rem Sens. 85A Dec 24 2319 Asiasat 3 Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur Comsat 86A Jan 7 0228 Lunar Prospector Athena-2 SP Florida LC46 Probe 01A Jan 10 0032 Skynet 4D Delta 7925 Canaveral LC17B Comsat Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-90 Apr 2 OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-91 May 28 OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP OV-105 Endeavour LC39A STS-89 Jan 22 MLP/SRB/ET/OV stacks MLP1/ MLP2/RSRM65 VAB Bay 3 STS-90 MLP3/RSRM64/ET-90/OV-105 LC39A STS-89 .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS6 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@urania.harvard.edu | | USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/jsr.html | | Back issues: ftp://sao-ftp.harvard.edu/pub/jcm/space/news/news.* | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'