Jonathan's Space Report No. 537

Jonathan's Space Report
No. 537 2004 Oct 27, Pasadena, CA
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* Space Station and Shuttle

Soyuz TMA-5 docked with the Pirs module on Oct 16 at 0416 UTC.
Sharipov, Chiao, Shargin, Padalka and Fincke spent a week aboard the
Station and at 1814 UTC on Oct 23 Padalka, Fincke and Shargin
entered Soyuz TMA-4 and closed the hatches leaving Chiao and Sharipov
as the Station crew. Soyuz TMA-4 undocked at 2108 UTC and made
a small separation burn at 2111 UTC. At 2342 UTC the deorbit
burn lowered the orbit from 353 x 366 km to -23 x 355 km,
and the descent module separated at 0008 UTC on Oct 24, with
landing at 50.47N 67.12E near Arkalyk at 0036 UTC.

A significant milestone on the way to the next Shuttle flight
is expected in early November. The RSRM-90 solid rocket motors
will be taken to High Bay 1 of the Vehicle Assembly Building
and placed on Mobile Launch Platform 1 to begin the assembly
of booster stack BI-124. The ET-120 external tank, with redesigns
to prevent foam loss, will arrive at KSC in January and be
stacked in February, while Discovery is prepared in Orbiter
Processing Facility Bay 3. NASA now hopes to launch Discovery
on mission STS-114 in May.

* Cassini

The Cassini-Huygens space probe made a flyby of Titan on Oct 26. The Ta
flyby closest approach was at 1530 UTC at an altitude of 1200 km above
Titan's surface. (Light travel time to Earth was 1hr 14min so this
corresponds to an Earth Received signal time of 1644 UTC, reported in
some sources as the flyby time.) Cassini is falling inward towards
Saturn, with closest approach at 1019 UTC on Oct 28; the Titan flyby
changed the orbit to about 0.3 x 4.6 million km inclined 13.8 deg to the
ring plane. This lowered the apoapsis by a factor 2 and sets the probe
up for the Tb flyby of Titan on Dec 13.

* Genesis

In JSR 534 I incorrectly reported that the bus section of the Genesis
space probe burned up over the Pacific after capsule separation. Although
this had been the original mission plan as still reported on the Genesis
website, in fact the bus maneuvered to miss the Earth.

The Genesis sample return capsule was ejected from its parent spacecraft
at 1153 UTC on September 8 at an altitude of 59600 km, and entered the
atmosphere four hours later at 1555 UTC. Meanwhile, the spacecraft bus
made a course change at 1208 UTC, at an altitude of 56700 km, to raise
its perigee from a few kilometers below the Earth's surface to a height
of 242 km, allowing it to just miss the atmosphere and head out to deep
space. The incoming trajectory was a geocentric orbit of around -1 x
1376362 km x 52.0 deg, with the 'vacuum perigee' (the path the return
capsule would have taken if Earth didn't have an atmosphere) grazing the
surface of the Earth. (Note that the error bar on my calculation of the
perigee is several km). The perigee raise burn changed this to
a 242 x 1350949 km x 52.0 deg orbit, missing the atmosphere nicely at
1558 UTC. The Genesis bus passed lunar orbit outbound early on Sep 11.
It will come back in for a new perigee on Nov 6, by which time
lunisolar perturbations will have changed the orbit to
60672 x 1454293 km x 41.9 deg,
and will reach apogee again toward the end of the year.
An extended `Exodus' mission for solar wind monitoring has been proposed
which would have used a small burn to put the Genesis bus in a solar orbit
near
that of the Earth, but I believe that mission has not so far been funded.
(Thanks to DC Agle of JPL for the sep and course change times).

* FSW 20

The FSW recoverable satellite launched by China on Sep 27 returned to
Earth at 0248 UTC on Oct 15, falling through the roof of a house in the
village of Penglai, Sichuan province.

* FY-2C

The third Fengyun-2 weather satellite, and the first of the operational
'batch 2' model, was launched by a Chang Zheng 3A rocket on Oct 19. The
1380 kg satellite fired its apogee motor at around 1730 UTC on Oct 19
to enter a drifting geostationary orbit. The FG-36 apogee motor
was probably ejected from the satellite around that time. Xinhua reports
that
the prelaunch name of the satellite is FY-2 04, and the postlaunch name
is FY-2C.
Prelaunch Postlaunch
FY-2 01 - Destroyed in ground fire 1994.
FY-2 02 FY-2A 1997 Jun 10; in reserve 2000 May at 86E
FY-2 03 FY-2B 2000 Jun 25; at 123E
FY-2 04 FY-2C 2004 Oct 19; in transfer orbit


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

Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission
INTL.

DES.

Sep 6 1053 'Ofeq-6 Shaviyt Palmachim Imaging
F01
Sep 8 2314 SJ-6A ) CZ-4B Taiyuan Science
35A
SJ-6B ) Science
35B
Sep 20 1031 EDUSAT GSLV SDSC Comms
36A
Sep 23 1507 Kosmos-2408 ) Kosmos-3M Plesetsk Comms
37A
Kosmos-2409 ) Comms
37B
Sep 24 1650 Kosmos-2410 Soyuz-U Plesetsk LC16 Imaging
38A
Sep 27 0800 FSW 20 CZ-2D Jiuquan Imaging?
39A
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


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Jacques :-)

www.spacepatches.info