Jonathan's Space Report, No. 600

Jonathan's Space Report
No. 600 2008 Sep 26, Somerville, MA
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Shuttle and Station
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Sergey Volkov, Oleg Kononenko, and Greg Chamitoff remain aboard the
Station. Progress M-64 undocked from the Zarya nadir port on Sep 1 at
1947 UTC. It continued independent flight carrying out the
Plazma-Progress experiment until 2047 UTC on Sep 8, when it was
deorbited over the Pacific. The Jules Verne ATV undocked from the Zvezda
aft port on Sep 5. It is scheduled to reenter on Sep 29. Progress M-65
was launched on Sep 10. Docking with Zvezda was delayed because of
limited NASA support during Hurricane Ike, and finally occurred at 1843
UTC on Sep 17.

Atlantis is now on Pad 39A, preparing for an October launch on mission STS-125
to the Hubble Space Telescope. Endeavour is on Pad 39B, in reserve
for a potential rescue mission in case of an on-orbit emergency.

Shenzhou 7
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Chinese astronauts Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng were
launched into a 200 x 330 km x 42.4 deg orbit on board Shenzhou 7 by a
CZ-2F rocket on Sep 25. At 2005 UTC the orbit was raised to 330 x 336 km.
The Shenzhou 7 orbital module will be used as an airlock for China's
first spacewalk.

RapidEye
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Each RapidEye satellite has a mass of 152 kg including 12 kg of
propellant (thanks to Stuart Eves of SSTL for the info). The five
RapidEye satellites have been given Greek names: Tachys, Mati, Choma,
Choros, and Trochia, allegedly meaning Rapid, Eye, Earth, Space, Orbit
respectively. (Thanks to Gunter Krebs for drawing my attention to this.)

I'm don't believe Choma and Choros really mean Earth and space in the
cosmic sense. They have the sense more of 'dirt/ground' and a bounded
'area'; correspondent Yorgos Papadopoulos of Thessaloniki confirms to
me that Gaia and Kosmos would have been better words to translate
'Earth' and 'Space'.

Glonass
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Three Glonass satellites were launched on Sep 25. The Khrunichev Proton-M
rocket used one of the older, Energiya-built, Blok DM-2 upper stages,
instead of the Briz-M used by commercial launches. The spacecraft,
built by the Reshetnev company, were placed in 19100 km circular orbits
by the DM-2. The Proton-M third stage and an adapter were left in
low orbit.

Rosetta
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The Rosetta probe passed 800 km from minor planet (2867) Steins
at 1838 UTC on Sep 5.

Huan Jing
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Two Huan Jing ('Environment') satellites were launched by CZ-2C
from China's Taiyuan space center on Sep 6. They carry visible and
infrared sensors.

The satellites were launched into a 626 x 668 km x 98.0 deg orbit. A moderately
large number of debris objects have been cataloged, suggesting that
the second stage disintegrated after being discarded.

Three objects (41A, B, D) are tracked in the high orbit, presumably the
payloads and the SMA kick stage. Four objects tracked in higher apogee
transfer orbits of 250 x 850-880 km are probably the four stage
separation motor covers usually associated with CZ-2C launches: 41V,
41Y, 41Z, 41AA. The remanining objects are in 200-400 x 500-700 km
orbits and I expect they are associated with disintegration of
the CZ-2C second stage, which is probably 41C.


GeoEye-1
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The GeoEye-1 imaging satellite was launched from Vandenberg on Sep 6.
The commercially operated GeoEye-1 has 0.4-meter resolution and will supply
data to the US National Geo-spatial Intelligence Agency (NGA).
The satellite was launched to a 668 x 687 km x 98.1 deg orbit.

Nimiq 4
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Nimiq 4 was launched by a Proton-M/Briz-M from Baykonur on Sep 19.
The geostationary television broadcasting satellite is owned by the
Canadian operator Telesat.

Galaxy 19
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A Sea Launch Zenit-3SL took off from the Odyssey platform in the Pacific
on Sep 24 and put Intelsat's Galaxy 19 satellite in geostationary
transfer orbit. The satellite is a Loral 1300 class satellite with a
mass of 4690 kg.


Table of Recent (orbital) Launches
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Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Aug 3 0334 Trailblazer ) Falcon 1 Omelek Tech F01
PreSat ) Tech F01
Nanosail-D ) Tech F01
Celestis ) Burial F01
Aug 14 2044 Superbird 7 ) Ariane 5ECA Kourou ELA3 Comms 38A
AMC 21 ) Comms 38D
Aug 16 1932 Test payload? Safir Semnan Test F02?
Aug 18 2243 Inmarsat 4 F3 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC200/39 Comms 39A
Aug 29 0716 Tachys ) Dnepr Baykonur LC109 Imaging 40A
Mati ) Imaging 40B
Choma ) Imaging 40C
Choros ) Imaging 40D
Trochia ) Imaging 40E
Sep 6 0325 Huan Jing-1A ) Chang Zheng 2C Taiyuan Imaging 41A
Huan Jing-1B ) Imaging 41B
Sep 6 1851 GeoEye-1 Delta 7420 Vandenberg SLC2W Imaging 42A
Sep 10 1950 Progress M-65 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1/5 Cargo 43A
Sep 19 2148 Nimiq 4 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC200/39 Comms 44A
Sep 24 1928 Galaxy 19 Zenit-3SL SL Odyssey Comms 45A
Sep 25 0849 Kosmos-2442?) Proton-M/DM-2 Baykonur LC81/24 Nav 46A
Kosmos-2443?) Nav 46B
Kosmos-2444?) Nav 46C
Sep 25 1310 Shenzhou 7 Chang Zheng 2F Jiquan Spaceship 47A

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| Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 |
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