Jonathan's Space Report No. 504 2003 Jul 15, Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shuttle and Station -------------------- The Expedition 7 crew, Yuriy Malenchenko and Edward Lu, are on board the Space Station. In a dramatic test in Texas on July 7, foam shot at RCC panel 8 in a Shuttle wing mockup smashed a huge (half-meter) hole in the panel, lending strong credibility to the hypothesis that external tank foam caused a breach in Columbia's wing during launch. The actual breach was more likely only of order 0.2m. The most likely scenario for the breakup can now be summarized (below); the remarkable thing is the continued stable flight of Columbia for several minutes after serious breaches in the left wing. Time (UTC) Event 2003 Jan 16 1539:00 Launch 1540:21 ET bipod foam piece separates; Drag slows it by 200 m/s; Hits lower part of RCC panel 8 1541:06 SRB separation 1547:33 Main engine cutoff 1547:44 ET separation 1620:24 OMS-2 burn 1736:01 Payload bay doors open 2003 Jan 17 1517 Yaw attitude change 1517? Fragment of panel 8 drifts out of damaged leading edge area Tracked on radar as 2003-03B 2003 Jan 19 2100? Fragment 2003-03B reenters 2003 Feb 1 Payload bay doors close (time uncertain) 1315:30 Deorbit burn, completed 1318:08 1344:09 Entry interface (reaches fiducial 120.4km altitude) 1348:39-59 First data showing stress and heating on left wing 1350:00 Fragments of RCC panel 8/9 breaking off? 1351:14 Aluminium wing spar melts through in RCC 8/9 region 1354:33 Parts of left wing skin and tiles breaking off 1359:38 Loss of signal 1359:46 Left wing breaking up 1400:14 End of recorder data 1400:18 Orbiter breaks up Recent Launches --------------- NASA's second Mars Exploration Rover, MER-B (MER-1) 'Opportunity', was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0318 UTC on Jul 8. The launch vehicle is a Delta 7925H, which is similar to the standard 7925 model but with larger GEM-46 solid strapon motors previously used only on the Delta III 8930. MER-B separated from the Delta third stage at 0436 UTC and is on its way to Mars. Eurockot and Krunichev have launched a Rokot vehicle from Plesetsk carrying nine small satellites. The two stages of the UR-100N missile separated from the Briz-KM stage at 5 min after launch. The first Briz-KM burn lasted 8.2 minutes and resulted in an approximately -200 x 320 km x 96.8 deg suborbital transfer ellipse. Briz burnt again at 44 min after launch and entered a 317 x 846 km x 96.8 deg orbit. The Czech MIMOSA satellite then separated at 1502 UTC. A third Briz-KM burn at 1541 UTC resulted in an 817 x 830 km x 98.7 deg circular orbit. At 1542 UTC the NLS-1 nanosatellite launcher attached to Briz ejected three small 1 kg Cubesats, Can X-1, DTUSat and AAU-Cubesat. Almost simultaneously, the NLS-2 launcher ejected Quakesat, a 3 kg satellite based on a triple-Cubesat design. At 1546 UTC the 60 kg Canadian MOST astronomical satellite was ejected, and a minute later two more 1 kg Cubesats, Cubesat XI-IV and CUTE-I, separated from Briz. At 1556 UTC Briz-KM made a depletion burn to lower its orbit to 250 x 830 km x 98.4 deg. The largest payload is Krunichev's Monitor-E mockup, which remains attached to the Briz-KM stage, and is cataloged as 2003-31A. MIMOSA is 2003-31B, MOST is 2003-31D, and Quakesat is 2003-31F; XI-IV is very probably 2003-31J. The NLS-1 payloads are 31C, 31G and 31H but their actual orbits and respective identifications are not clear yet; DTUSat and AAU-Cubesat are not yet in communication with their owners due to ground station problems. Mimosa is a 65 kg polyhedron built by Space Devices Ltd. of Praha, and operated by the Astronomical Insitute of the Czech Academy of Sciences (Astronomicky ustav AV CR). It carries an accelerometer to study atmospheric density. MOST (Microvariability and Oscillations of Stars) is a Canadian Space Agency project with a 0.15m telescope which will make photometric observations of stars down to mag 6 with 1 part per million accuracy in the 3500-7000 Angstrom band. The Stanford University/Quakesat LLC Quakesat will be used for detection of ELF radio emission from seismic activity. CanX-1, from the University of Toronto, carries a camera for attitude determination. CUTE-I carries engineering tests and was built by the Tokyo Inst. of Technology (Tokyo Kogyo Daigaku); Cubesat XI is similar and is from the University of Tokyo (Tokyo Daigaku). Two Danish Cubesats are AAU Cubesat from Aalborg Universitet (University of Aalborg) and DTUSat from Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (Technical University of Denmark), at Lyngby. DTUSat carries a 450-meter copper wire tether for lowering the satellite orbit. AAU Cubesat carries a 100-meter-resolution Earth imaging camera. Table of Recent Launches ----------------------- Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Jun 2 1745 Mars Express Soyuz-FG/Fregat Baykonur LC31 Probe 22A Jun 4 1923 Kosmos-2398 Kosmos-3M Plesetsk Navigation 23A Jun 6 2215 AMC-9 Proton-K/Briz-M Baykonur LC200/39 Comms 24A Jun 8 1034 Progress M1-10 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 25A Jun 10 1356 Thuraya 2 Zenit-3SL Odyssey, Pacific Phone comms 26A Jun 10 1758 MER-A Spirit Delta 7925 Canaveral SLC17A Mars probe 27A Jun 11 2238 BSAT-2c ) Ariane 5G Kourou ELA3 Comms 28A Optus/D C1 ) Comms 28B Jun 19 2000 Molniya-3 Molniya-M Plesetsk LC43/3 Comms 29A Jun 26 1853 Orbview-3 Pegasus XL Vandenberg RW30/12 Imaging 30A Jun 30 1415 Monitor-E mockup) Tech 31A Mimosa ) Science 31B MOST ) Rokot Plesetsk LC133 Astronomy 31D CUTE-I ) Tech 31E Quakesat ) Science 31F Can X-1 ) Tech 31 Cubesat XI-IV ) Tech 31J AAU-Cubesat ) Imaging 31 DTUSat ) Tether 31 Jul 8 0318 MER-B Opportunity Delta 7925H Canaveral SLC17B Mars probe 32A .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'