Jonathan's Space Report No. 540

Jonathan's Space Report
No. 540 2004 Dec 14, Somerville, MA.
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No new launches for almost a month, but lots of activity in space:

* Space Station

Soyuz TMA-5 was reparked on Nov 29. The Ex-10 crew entered Soyuz,
undocked it from the Pirs module at 0932 UTC and redocked it at the
nearby Zarya module at 0953 UTC.

* Cassini

The Cassini spacecraft flew past Titan (Saturn VI) at 1138 UTC on Dec
13, lowering its Saturnian orbit further to 231000 km x 3533000 km x 8.2
deg from its previous 313000 x 4.6M km x 13.8 deg path. Only small orbit
changes are now needed to set the Huygens probe up for its Titan entry
on Jan 14. The Titan-B flyby was at an altitude of 1200 km above Titan's
surface, similar to the earlier Titan-a flyby on Oct 26. At 0252 UTC on
Dec 15, Cassini made a 72500 km flyby of Dione (Saturn IV), outside
its gravitational sphere of influence but closer than Voyager 1's 161000
km approach.

* Swift

The Swift observatory has successfully activated its Burst Alert
Telescope. The X-ray Telescope has also made its first observations
of the sky, but a faulty cooler means the Swift team may have to
run the CCD detectors hot, partly compromising their sensitivity.
They were due to open the door on the Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope on
Dec 14.

* Intelsat Americas-7

Intelsat's IA-7 satellite had a power failure on Nov 28 and was briefly
declared lost. Intelsat had recovered control of the satellite by
Dec 4. The satellite was a Loral LS-1300 originally launched
as Telstar 7 in Sep 1999 for Loral Skynet, the successor organization
to AT&T's comms satellite business. It was sold to Intelsat in March
this year.

* Delta 89

This is one of those items for the 'special friends of JSR...'

Space Command seems to have swapped the identities of catalog number
SSN 06127 (1972-58B) and 07832 (1972-58C), debris fragments from the
explosion of the Delta 89 rocket. Delta 89 was launched in 1972 July
carrying ERTS 1 (Landsat 1) to orbit. On 1975 May 22 residual propellants
leaked together and had a party causing the rocket stage to
explode into hundreds of debris objects.

Before the explosion, Delta 89 was cataloged as object 06127 and was in
a 632 x 909 km x 98.3 deg orbit. In 1975 Nov new elements were issued
for 06127, now in a 486 x 691 km x 98.5 deg orbit and with a small radar
cross section (RCS) value of about 0.2 sq m. This object reentered in
1977 Feb.

Meanwhile, on 1975 May 29 new objects 07832 to 07876 were cataloged
as 1975-58C to 1975-58AY in a variety of orbits from 400 x 700 km to 700
x 1400 km. Among these, 07832 (1972-58C) had an orbit of 641 x 921 km x
98.3 deg, a fairly small difference from the pre-explosion rocket stage,
and a large radar cross section of 2.3 sq m. Other large RCS objects
are 07857 (1972-58AD) with RCS of 9.3 sq m in a very similar 641 x 920
km orbit, and 07854 (1975-58AA) with RCS of 1.1 sq m in a 651 x 910 km
orbit. This compares with unexploded Delta stages from the same era with
RCS values from 6 to 10 sq m.

The last elements issued for 06127 had been on 1977 Feb 10 in a 311 x
330 km orbit. On 2004 Nov 20, object 07832's orbit finally became lower
than this and four days later Space Command stopped issuing orbital data
for 07832, listed it as having reentered in 1977, and started giving
data for 06127, while still also listing that object as 'decayed in
1977'. It appears that Space Command thinks that the object formerly
known as 07832 is actually the main remnant of Delta 89, and has
redesignated it as 06127. This object is expected to reenter on Dec 8.
Meanwhile, 07857 (1972-58AD), which has even larger RCS, is decaying
more slowly, and started off in the same orbit, is still in a 587 x 757
km x 98.5 deg orbit and from the data available in the public domain I
infer it to be the largest part of Delta 89, probably including the
engine.

Summary:
Delta 89 stage: was 06127 prior to 1975 explosion,
largest piece was 07857 afterwards
Large fragment: was 07832 from 1975 explosion till 2004 Nov;
06127 from 2004 Nov to Dec.
Small fragment: was 06127 from 1975 explosion till reentry in 1977,
but now retrospectively
recataloged as 07832 (with no associated data).

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

Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission
INTL.

DES.

Oct 14 0306 Soyuz TMA-5 Soyuz-FG Baykonur LC1/5 Spaceship
40A
Oct 14 2123 AMC 15 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC200/39 Comms
41A
Oct 19 0120 FY-2C CZ-3A Xichang Weather
42A
Oct 29 2211 Ekspress AM-1 Proton-K/DM-2M Baykonur LC200/39 Comms
43A
Nov 6 0310 ZY-2C CZ-4B Taiyuan Imaging
44A
Nov 6 0539 GPS SVN 61 Delta 7925 Canaveral SLC17B Navigation
45A
Nov 8 1830 Oblik Soyuz-2-1A Plesetsk LC43/4 Test
U01
Nov 18 1045 Shiyan 2 CZ-2C Xichang Imaging
46A
Nov 20 1716 Swift Delta 7320 Canaveral SLC17A Astronomy
47A

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

www.spacepatches.info