Jonathan's Space Report No. 399 1999 May 24 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Human spaceflight ------------------- NASA is preparing to launch mission STS-96 to the International Space Station on May 27. Orbiter OV-103 Discovery will be crewed by commander Kent Rominger (Cdr. USN), pilot Rick Husband (Lt-Col USAF), and mission specialists Dr. Tamara Jernigan, Dr Ellen Ochoa and Dr. Daniel Barry of NASA, Julie Payette of the Canadian Space Agency, and Valeriy Tokarev (Col. VVS) of the Russian Air Force. Discovery will dock with PMA-2 at one end of the PMA-2/Unity/PMA-1/Zarya stack. The crew will transfer equipment from the Spacehab Logistics Double Module in the payload bay to the interior of the station. Tammy Jernigan and Dan Barry will make a spacewalk to transfer equipment from the payload bay to the exterior of the station. The ODS/EAL docking/airlock truss carries two TSA (Tool Stowage Assembly) packets with spacewalk tools. The Integrated Cargo Carrier (ICC), built by Energiya and DASA-Bremen, carries parts of the Strela crane and the US OTD crane as well as the SHOSS box which contains three bags of tools and equipment to be stored on ISS's exterior (my statement in JSR 394 that the SHOSS unit was a refrigerator was a confusion with another device being built by the SHOSS group for ISS). The STS-96 payload bay manifest (repeated from JSR 393) is: Bay 1-2: Orbiter Docking System/External Airlock Bay 3-4: Tunnel Adapter S/N 001 Bay 5-7: Spacehab Tunnel Bay 5: Keel Yoke Device (KYD) and Integrated Cargo Carrier (ICC) Bay 8-12: Spacehab Logistics Double Module Bay 13 Port: Adapter Beam (ABA) with IVHM Bay 13 Stbd: Adapter Beam (ABA) with SVF/Starshine Sill: RMS Arm S/N 303 The STS-96 stack, on mobile launcher 2, has been rolled back out to pad 39B, and the hail damage to the external tank has been repaired. The STS-93 stack is back in VAB high bay 1 on mobile launcher 1, and the STS-99 stack is being assembled in high bay 3 on mobile launcher 3. Viktor Afanas'ev, Sergey Avdeev and Jean-Pierre Haignere remain on board the Mir complex. The Soyuz TM-29 transport craft and the Progress M-41 cargo ship are docked to the complex. Recent Launches --------------- A classified NRO satellite was launched on May 22 by Lockheed Martin Titan 4B flight B-12 from Vandenberg's Space Launch Complex 4-East. This is the first successful Titan launch in 4 attempts (although the last two failures were upper stage problems, and this flight didn't have an upper stage). The payload had been reported to be a radar imaging recon satellite built by Lockheed Martin/Denver and previously codenamed LACROSSE. However apparently the short 50' fairing was used instead of the 66 foor fairing used by LACROSSE. Florida Today reports the 50' fairing hasn't been used before, but my notes indicate it was used for an imaging Improved CRYSTAL satellite launched in Nov 1992 - can anyone confirm or refute? If the launch was to a 66 deg or 57 deg orbit, the payload was probably related to the ocean surveillance triplets, but if the launch was to a 97 degree orbit then the payload was most likely an Improved CRYSTAL derivative. The Terriers and MUBLCOM satellites were launched on May 18 by an Orbital Sciences Corp. Pegasus XL/HAPS vehicle. The L-1011 Stargazer aircraft took off from Vandenberg's runway 30/12 at 0412 UTC on May 18 and headed to the drop box over the Pacific at 36.0N 123.0W. Stargazer dropped the Pegasus at 0509 UTC and the first stage solid motor ignited five seconds later. At 0518 UTC the third stage motor (cataloged as 1998-26C) burned out and separated, leaving the payload stack in a 405 x 548 km x 97.7 deg orbit. The PRIMEX HAPS-Lite stage then made the first burn of its hydrazine engine and entered a 540 x 553 km x 97.7 deg orbit. The box-shaped Terriers satellite was deployed at 0520 UTC. A minute later the conical Payload Adapter Fitting (1998-26E) was jettisoned, leaving the disk-shaped MUBLCOM satellite attached to HAPS. The second HAPS burn at 0522 UTC raised apogee to 775 km, followed by a third, apogee burn at 0610 UTC which circularized the orbit. MUBLCOM was deployed to a 769 x 776 km x 97.7 deg orbit. The final HAPS burn then placed the depleted HAPS stage (1998-26D) in a lower 388 x 722 km x 97.1 deg disposal orbit. TERRIERS is part of NASA's Student Explorer Demonstration Initiative (STEDI), which was a precursor program to the UNEX (University Explorer) series now in preparation. STEDI was managed by USRA (the Universities Space Research Association) for NASA, while UNEX will be more directly managed by NASA-GSFC. TERRIERS will be operated by the space physics group at Boston University for ionospheric studies, and carries TESS, a set of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) spectrographs to get electron density and thermospheric emission profiles. The GISSMO instrument will measure the solar EUV flux. The spacecraft was built by AeroAstro and based on HETE. TERRIERS was placed in the correct orbit, but it failed to orient its solar panel to the Sun and ran out of battery power by May 20. Controllers are optimistic that when its orbit precesses to a better sun angle the satellite will revive and the mission can continue. MUBLCOM (Multiple beam Beyond Line-of-sight Communications) is an experimental satellite funded by DARPA and managed by the US Army's Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM) at Ft Monmouth, New Jersey. It was built by Orbital using the Microstar (Orbcomm type) bus and carries a payload testing hand-held radio satellite communications for the armed forces. Telesat Canada's Nimiq television broadcasting satellite was launched by an International Launch Services Proton on May 21. The Krunichev Proton-K with an Energiya Blok DM3 upper stage placed the Lockheed Martin/Sunnyvale A2100-class Nimiq satellite in a 7050 x 35790 x 15.9 deg transfer orbit. The A2100 will use its liquid apogee engine (probably a Royal Ordnance Leros 1) to reach geostationary orbit. Telesat Canada also operates the Anik Canadian domestic comsats, the first of which was launched in 1972. Erratum ------- The CZ-4B rocket uses N2O4 (nitrogen tetroxide) and not LOX (liquid oxygen) as its oxidizer. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Apr 2 1128 Progress M-41 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 15A Apr 2 2203 Insat 2E Ariane 42P Kourou ELA2 Comsat 16A Apr 9 1701 DSP F19 Titan 4/IUS Canaveral LC41 Early Warn 17A Apr 12 2250 Eutelsat W3 Atlas 2AS Canaveral LC36A Comsat 18A Apr 15 0046 Globalstar M019 ) Soyuz-U/Ikar Baykonur LC1 Comsat 19A Globalstar M042 ) 19B Globalstar M044 ) 19C Globalstar M045 ) 19D Apr 15 1832 Landsat 7 Delta 7920-10 Vandenberg SLC2W Imaging 20A Apr 16 1030? Sputnik-99 - Mir, LEO Comsat 15C Apr 21 0459 UoSAT-12 Dnepr Baykonur LC109 Test 21B Apr 27 1822 Ikonos 1 Athena 2 Vandenberg SLC6 Imaging F01 Apr 28 2030 ABRIXAS ) Kosmos-3M Kap. Yar LC107? Astronomy 22A Megsat-0 ) Technol. 22B Apr 30 1630 Milstar-2 F1 Titan 4/Cen Canaveral LC40 Comsat 23A May 5 0100 Orion 3 Delta 8930 Canaveral LC17B Comsat 24A May 10 0133 Feng Yun 1C ) CZ-4B Taiyuan Imaging 25A Shi Jian 5 ) Research 25B May 18 0509 TERRIERS ) Pegasus XL/H Vandenberg Space sci 26A MUBLCOM ) Comsat 26B May 20 2230 Nimiq 1 Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur LC81 Comsat 27A May 22 0936 USA 144? Titan 4 Vandenberg SLC4E Unknown 28A Current Shuttle Processing Status _________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 1 STS-93 NET Jul 22 OV-103 Discovery LC39B STS-96 May 27 OV-104 Atlantis OPF Bay 3 STS-101 Oct 14 OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 2 STS-99 Sep 18 MLP1/RSRM-69/ET-99 VAB Bay 1 STS-93 MLP2/RSRM-70/ET-100/OV-103 LC39B STS-96 MLP3/RSRM-71? VAB Bay 3 STS-99 .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'