Jonathan's Space Report No. 513

Jonathan's Space Report
No. 513 2003 Nov 3, Cambridge,
MA
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Shuttle and Station
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Soyuz TMA-2 undocked from the Zarya module at 2317 UTC on Oct 27 with
Yuriy Malenchenko, Ed Lu and Pedro Duque aboard. It fired its deorbit
engines at 0147 UTC on Oct 28 and landed near Arkalyk in Kazakhstan at
about 0241 UTC. Happily, there was no repetition of the reentry anomaly
which caused Soyuz TMA-1 to land off course. Aboard the Station, the
Expedition 8 crew of Mike Foale and Aleksandr Kaleri are settling in to
their vigil on orbit. Soyuz TMA-3 is docked to the Pirs module and
Progress M-48 is docked to Zvezda.

Recent Launches
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Eurockot/Krunichev has launched a UR-100N Rokot two-stage refurbished
missile with a Briz-KM upper stage and the SERVIS-1 satellite. SERVIS-1
(Space Environment Reliability Verification of Integrated System) is
owned by the Japanese USEF organization and (possibly) the Japanese
Ministry of Trade and Industry; the satellite is to flight-qualify a
variety of spacecraft components including navigation, computer, star
tracker, battery and laser gyro. It was built by Mitsubishi. The purpose
of SERVIS is to increase the reliability of Japanese satellites;
meanwhile, JAXA lost contact with the Midori-2 earth observing satellite
last week and its mission is presumed lost.

China has launched a recoverable satellite with a Chang Zheng 2D rocket
from Jiuquan. The satellite is a modified version of the FSW-2
recoverable satellite and includes a camera payload which will probably
be used for both military reconnaissance and earth resources studies.
Some Western analysts expected that the new FSW would be the previously
promised `seeds' mission with a study of 1000 species of seeds in space,
but the Xinhua news agency release does not mention this and emphasizes
only 'land surveying, mapping and other scientific experiments'.
No US orbital elements have been released so far.

Thanks to work by independent analysts and info from some of the
satellite operators, I can now report the identities of the 2003-42 launch
objects:

27939 2003-42A Mozhaets 4
27940 2003-42B S3M rocket/Rubin-4-DSI
27941 2003-42C NigeriaSat-1
27942 2003-42D UK-DMC
27943 2003-42E BILSAT-1
27944 2003-42F Larets
27945 2003-42G STSat-1
27947 2003-42J cataloging error - not a real object

BILSAT-1 has begun testing its cold-gas propulsion system; the
Surrey-built satellites comprising the Disaster Monitoring Constellation
(Alsat, UK-DMC, NigeriaSat and BILSAT) have a limited maneuvering
capability. It has been confirmed that Larets is a small 0.2m sphere
covered with laser retroreflectors for calibration and geodesy, although
it still isn't clear which Russian organizations built, own and operate
it.

Table of Recent Launches
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Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission
INTL.

DES.
Sep 9 0429 USA 171 Titan 4B/Centaur Canaveral SLC40 Sigint
41A
Sep 16 PS2 KT-1 Taiyuan Test
F01
Sep 27 0612 UK-DMC ) Imaging
42D
NigeriaSat-1 ) Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC132 Imaging
42C
BILSAT-1 ) Imaging
42E
STSat-1 ) Astronomy
42G
Mozhaets-4 ) Comms?
42A
Larets ) Calib
42F
Rubin-4-DSI ) Test
42B
Sep 27 2314 Insat 3E ) Ariane 5G Kourou ELA3 Comms
43E
e-Bird ) Comms
43B
SMART-1 ) Lunar
43C
Oct 1 0403 Galaxy 13 Zenit-3SL SL Odyssey Comms
44B
Oct 15 0100 Shenzhou 5 ) CZ-2F Jiuquan Spaceship
45A
SZ-5 OM ) Imaging
45G
Oct 17 0452 IRS-P6 PSLV Sriharikota Imaging
46A
Oct 18 0538 Soyuz TMA-3 Soyuz-FG Baykonur Spaceship
47A
Oct 18 1617 DMSP F16 Titan 23G Vandenberg Weather
48A
Oct 21 0316 ZY-1 No. 2 ) CZ-4B Taiyuan Imaging
49A
CX-1 ) Comms
49B
Oct 30 1343 SERVIS-1 Rokot Plesetsk Tech
50A
Nov 3 0720 FSW CZ-2D Jiuquan Imaging
51A

..-------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 |
| Somerville MA 02143 | |
| c/o | |
| Center for Astrophysics, | |
| 60 Garden St, MS6 | |
| Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : |
| USA | |
|
|
| JSR: http://www.planet4589.org/jsr.html
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| Back issues: http://www.planet4589.org/space/jsr/back



--
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Jacques :-)

Editor: www.spacepatches.info