Jonathan's Space Report No. 367 1998 Jul 26 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTICE: Due to a systems change here at CFA, my personal email address has changed to jcm@cfa.harvard.edu effective immediately - mail to the old address at urania.harvard.edu will no longer work. Alan Shepard ------------ The second human in space, Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr., died Jul 22 (UTC) in Monterey, California of leukemia at the age of 74. Shepard was the pilot of Freedom Seven (Mercury Spacecraft 7), which was launched on the MR-3 suborbital flight on 1961 May 5. Shepard was also the commander of Apollo 14, the third lunar landing mission. The first 20 humans in space (by the 80 km definition I choose to adopt) were: Yuriy Alexeevich Gagarin (1934-1968) 3KA No. 3 "Vostok" Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. (1923-1998) Mercury SC7 "Freedom Seven" Virgil Ivan Grissom (1926-1967) Mercury SC11 "Liberty Bell 7" German Stepanovich Titov (1935- ) 3KA No. 4 "Vostok-2" John Herschel Glenn, Jr. (1921- ) Mercury SC13 "Friendship Seven" Malcolm Scott Carpenter (1925- ) Mercury SC18 "Aurora Seven" Robert Michael White (1924- ) X-15-3 Flight 3-7-14 Andriyan Grigorevich Nikolaev (1929- ) 3KA No. 5 "Vostok-3" Pavel Romanovich Popovich (1930- ) 3KA No. 6 "Vostok-4" Walter Marty Schirra, Jr (1923- ) Mercury SC16 "Sigma Seven" Joseph Albert Walker (1921-1966) X-15-3 Flight 3-14-24 Leroy Gordon Cooper, Jr (1927- ) Mercury SC20 "Faith Seven" Valeriy Fyodorovich Bykovskiy (1934- ) 3KA No. 7 "Vostok-5" Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova (1937- ) 3KA No. 8 "Vostok-6" Robert Aitken Rushworth (1924-1993) X-15-3 Flight 3-20-31 Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov (1927-1967) 3KV No. 3 "Voskhod" Konstantin Petrovich Feoktistov (1926- ) 3KV No. 3 "Voskhod" Boris Borisovich Yegorov (1937-1994) 3KV No. 3 "Voskhod" Pavel Ivanovich Belyaev (1925-1970) 3KD No. 4 "Voskhod-2" Aleksei Arkhipovich Leonov (1934- ) 3KD No. 4 "Voskhod-2" Get Well, Bill -------------- CBS space correspondent Bill Harwood was injured in a car crash on Jul 11. Bill's site http://uttm.com/space/ is one of the best sources on Shuttle news. Let's hope Bill makes a speedy recovery. Shuttle and Mir --------------- The next Shuttle mission is STS-95, in October. The EO-25 crew of Talgat Musabaev and Nikolai Budarin are continuing work aboard the Mir complex. The EO-26 crew of Gennadiy Padalka and Sergey Avdeev, together with Yuriy Baturin, will be launched on Soyuz TM-28 on Aug 13. Musabaev, Budarin and Baturin land in Soyuz TM-27 on Aug 25. The EO-27 crew at launch on 1999 Feb 22 is Viktor Afanas'ev and two cosmonaut-researchers, Jean-Pierre Haignere of France and Ivan Bella of Slovakia. According to some reports, Haignere and Bella will land on Mar 2 in Soyuz TM-28, with the long stay EO-28 crew becoming Afanas'ev and Avdeev; however it seems likely that Haignere will in fact replace Avdeev on the long-stay crew. Finally, on 1999 Jun 1 the crew will depart Mir in Soyuz TM-29 and land, with the Mir complex being deorbited a week later. This schedule, of course, is almost certain to change. Recent Launches --------------- In addition to the satellites mentioned in JSR 366, a fifth microsatellite was launched along with Resurs-O1 No. 4 on Jul 10. The WESTPAC (formerly WPLTN-1) geodesy satellite is a copy of Potsdam's GFZ-1 satellite, a sphere covered with laser retroreflectors, with a slightly different `Fizeau' corner cube design. It is a target for the Western Pacific Laser Tracking Network (WPLTN) and is a joint project of Electro Optic Systems of Queanbeyan, New South Wales, Australia, and the Russian Space Agency. Mass is around 24 kg and diameter around 0.24m. The WPLTN is headquartered in Australia and Space Command has cataloged the satellite as Australian. AUSLIG (Australian Surveying and Land Information Group), part of the Australian Federal Govt., may be the actual satellite owner. China launched a Chang Zheng 3B on Jul 18 at 0920 UTC carrying the Sinosat 1 communications satellite. The CZ-3B's liquid hydrogen upper stage and the Sinosat were placed in a 609 x 35958 km x 19.0 deg geostationary transfer orbit at 0945 UTC. The first two liquid apogee burns were carried out on Jul 19 and 21. Sinosat is an Alcatel (formerly Aerospatiale) Spacebus 3000 class satellite, built at the Cannes facility. Launch mass was 2820 kg. Sinosat is owned temporarily by EurasSpace, a joint venture between Daimler-Benz Aerospace and the China Aerospace Corp., and will be delivered after on-orbit testing to Sino Satellite Communications Co. of Shanghai for communications services in China. Thanks to Stefan Barensky for details. Aleksandr Zheleznyakov reports that the Molniya-3 launch time was 0048 UT on Jul 1. The Galileo Orbiter had a safemode event at around 1814 UTC on Jul 20 during its inbound approach to the inner Jovian system, causing loss of almost all the data from the Europa 16 encounter. Telemetry from the spacecraft has now resumed. Galileo passed 1837 km from Europa's surface at 0507 UTC on Jul 21, just after perijove at 632000 km radius, at 0019 UTC on Jul 21. Table of Recent Launches ------------------------ Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Jun 2 2206 Discovery ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 34A Spacehab ) Jun 10 0035 Thor 3 Delta 7925 Canaveral LC17A Comsat 35A Jun 15 2258 Kosmos-2352 ) Tsiklon-3 Plesetsk LC32/1 Comsat 36A Kosmos-2353 ) Comsat 36B Kosmos-2354 ) Comsat 36C Kosmos-2355 ) Comsat 36D Kosmos-2356 ) Comsat 36E Kosmos-2357 ) Comsat 36F Jun 18 2248 Intelsat 805 Atlas 2AS Canaveral LC36A Comsat 37A Jun 24 1830 Kosmos-2358 Soyuz-U Plesetsk Recon 38A Jun 25 1400 Kosmos-2359 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC31 Recon 39A Jul 1 0048 Molniya-3 Molniya-M Plesetsk Comsat 40A Jul 3 1812 Nozomi M-5 Kagoshima Mars probe 41A Jul 7 0315 Tubsat-N ) Shtil'-1 K-407,Barents Comsat 42A Tubsat-N1 ) Comsat 42B Jul 10 0630 Resurs-O1 No. 4 ) Zenit-2 Baykonur LC45 Rem. Sens. 43A Fasat-Bravo ) Exptl. 43B TMSAT ) Exptl. 43C Gurwin Techsat 1B) Exptl. 43D WESTPAC ) Geodesy 43E SAFIR-2 ) Comsat 43F Jul 18 0920 Sinosat CZ-3B Xichang LC2 Comsat 44A Current Shuttle Processing Status __________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-93 Unknown OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-95 Oct 29 OV-104 Atlantis Palmdale OMDP OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-88 Unknown .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS6 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@cfa.harvard.edu | | USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/jsr.html | | Back issues: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/back | | Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@head-cfa.harvard.edu, (un)subscribe jsr | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'