Jonathan's Space Report No. 530

Jonathan's Space Report
No. 530 2004 Jul 8, Somerville, MA


At the International Space Station, astronauts Padalka and Fincke made a
spacewalk on Jun 30 and successfully completed the CMG (control moment
gyro) circuit breaker repair in one of the secondary power distribution
assemblies in the S0 truss segment. The Russian Pirs airlock module was
depressurized to 50 mbar by 2104 UTC, and the hatch was opened at 2119
UTC. The astronauts used the Strela boom to go from Pirs to the forward
end of the Zarya module, and then climbed up from Unity to the S0 truss.
They returned to the Pirs airlock by 0253 UTC and closed the hatch at
0259 UTC on Jul 1, repressurizing the airlock at 0300 UTC (Thanks to
Andrey Krasil'nikov for details).

Cassini has entered Saturn orbit. The main engine fired from 0112 UTC to
0248 UTC on Jul 1; Cassini is now in a roughly 20300 x 9037181 km x 17.3
deg orbit around the ringed planet. The neutral mass spectrometer cover
was ejected at 0315 UTC. A distant 339000 km Titan flyby on Jul 2 at
around 0930 UTC gave tantalizing glimpses of the surface; the first
close Titan flyby, at only 1200 km, is expected on Oct 26.

On Jun 29 a Boeing Sea Launch Zenit-3SL rocket took off from the Odyssey
platform on the equator and put a Space Systems Loral communications
satellite in orbit. The initial burn of the Blok DM-SL third stage
raised the trajectory from -2222 x 224 km to a 180 x 913 km x 0 deg
equatorial parking orbit as planned. The second burn of the DM-SL,
intended to reach a 756 x 35929 km orbit, shut down 54 seconds early, and
the
satellite only reached a 722 x 21618 km x 0.05 deg transfer orbit. The
spacecraft's own propulsion system will be used to make up the
shortfall. A test burn on Jul 1 raised perigee to 955 km.

Part of the new payload will be operated by Loral Skynet, which calls
the satellite Telstar 18. Another part of the payload will be operated
by APT Satellite Inc., which calls it Apstar 5. Although it's not
entirely clear whether the ownership of the satellite is still joint, as
originally planned, it seems that Loral is the effective operator of the
satellite (as opposed to the comms payload), so I'll call it Telstar 18.

A Kosmotras Dnepr rocket was launched from Baykonur on Jun 29 placing a
number of small satellites in orbit. The Dnepr upper stage releases the
payloads while still firing, and so they ended up in orbits with 698 km
perigees and apogees increasing in order of separation time:

Sep order COSPAR Satellite Orbit
1 25J Dnepr Plume shield 685 x 712 km x 98.3 deg
2 25C Demeter 696 x 722 km
3 25F Saudisat-2 699 x 734 km
4 25D SaudiComsat-1 699 x 749 km
5 25G Latinsat-C 699 x 765 km
6 25E SaudiComsat-2 698 x 782 km
7 25H Unisat-3 698 x 799 km
8 25K Amsat-Echo 697 x 817 km
9 25A Latinsat-D 695 x 852 km
10 25B Dnepr DS stage 679 x1193 km

(Normally it takes Space Command a long time to correctly sort out multiple
payloads from a launch like this, but they seem to have got their
act together recently).

Demeter is a French scientific satellite. SaudiComsat-1 and 2
(KACST, SaudiArabia) and Latinsat-C and Latinsat-D (SpaceQuest/Aprize
Argentina), and Amsat-Oscar-E (SpaceQuest/AMSAT-NA) are small 10-12 kg
cubes, while Saudisat-2 is a cuboid about 35 kg. Finally, Unisat-3 is an
Italian research satellite with a mass of 12 kg. Some earlier reports
indicated that a Celestis burial capsule package would be attached
to the final stage rocket, but Joe Burger tells me Celestis
confirmed to him that no such package was aboard.

Table of Recent Launches
-----------------------

Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission
INTL.

DES.

May 4 1242 DirecTV-7S Zenit-3SL Odyssey, Pacific Comms
16A
May 19 2222 AMC-11 Atlas IIAS Canaveral SLC36B Comms
17A
May 20 1747 ROCSAT-2 Taurus Vandenberg 576-E Imaging
18A
May 25 1234 Progress M-49 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo
19A
May 28 0600 Kosmos-2405 Tsiklon-2 Baykonur LC90/20 Sigint
20A
Jun 10 0128 Kosmos-2406 Zenit-2 Baykonur LC45 Sigint
21A
Jun 16 2227 Intelsat 10-02 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC200/39 Comms
22A
Jun 23 2254 GPS SVN 60 Delta 7925 Canaveral SLC17B Navigation
23A
Jun 29 0359 Telstar 18 Zenit-3SL Odyssey Comms
24A
Jun 29 0630 Demeter ) Dnepr Baykonur LC109 Science
25C
SaudiSat-2 ) Comms
25F
SaudiComsat-1 ) Comms
25D
LatinSat C ) Comms
25G
SaudiComsat-2 ) Comms
25E
Unisat-3 ) Tech
25H
AMSAT-Echo ) Comms
25K
Latinsat D ) Comms
25A


..-------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 |
| Somerville MA 02143 | inter : |
| USA | |



--
---------------------------

Jacques :-)

www.spacepatches.info