Jonathan's Space Report, No. 613

Jonathan's Space Report
No. 613 2009 Jul 16 Somerville, MA
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Shuttle and Station
--------------------

Gennadiy Padalka (Commander, Russia), Mike Barratt (Flight Engineer 1,
NASA), Koichi Wakata (FE2, Japan-JAXA), Roman Romanenko (FE3, Russia),
Frank DeWinne (FE4, European Space Agency) and Bob Thirsk (FE5, Canadian
Space Agency) are aboard the station as Expedition 20. Soyuz TMA-15 and
Soyuz TMA-14 are also docked to the Station.

The Progress M-02M cargo ship undocked at 1820 UTC on Jun 30. Padalka,
Barratt and Wakata boarded TMA-14 on Jul 2 and undocked from the Zvezda
aft port at 2129 UTC, redocking at Pirs at 2155 UTC. Soyuz TMA-15 is
docked at Zarya nadir.

On Jul 12 at around 1600 UTC Progress M-02M returned to the Station
and carried out a close approach to the newly active zenith docking port
on Zvezda to test the rendezvous equipment installed on the port in
recent spacewalks. Progress M-02M approached to a distance of about 10m
at 1707 UTC and then returned to an independent orbit. The next day,
at 1543 UTC on Jul 13, the cargo ship fired its engines to reenter
over the southern Pacific Ocean.

Space Shuttle Endeavour was launched from Kennedy Space Center on Jul 15,
carrying the Kibo Exposed Facility and the Kibo ELM Exposed Section.
The flight is Shuttle mission STS-127, Station mission 2J/A.
Launch was at 2203 UTC; at 2211 UTC, Endeavour and external tank ET-131
reached a 58 x 230 km x 51.6 deg orbit. At 2241 UTC Endeavour
fired its engines to raise its orbit to 155 x 232 km x 51.6 deg.

Crew of Endeavour are Mark Polansky, Doug Hurley, Dave Wolf, Chris
Cassidy, Julie Payette, Tom Marshburn and Tim Kopra. Kopra will join the
Ex 20 crew on ISS, replacing Wakata.

The Kibo Exposed Facility and Experiment Logistics Module (Exposed
Section) will be addeed to the Station. On the ELM-ES the Japanese MAXI
(Monitor of All Sky X-ray Image) experiment will be installed, which
should replace the aging Rossi XTE All Sky Monitor as an early warning
system for flaring X-ray sources.

STS-127 cargo manifest
----------------------

Name Bay location Mass (kg,guess)

Orbiter Docking System 1-2 1800
with EMU 3003, 3018 suits 260?
APC/SPDU 3 port 17?
APC/SSPL 3 stbd 51
Dragonsat 6
Kibo JEM Exposed Facility 4-7 3820
APC/ECSH 5 port 33?
APC/PPSU 5 stbd 20
APC/PPSU 6 stbd 20
Kibo ELM Exposed Section 8-9 2453
ICC-VLD 11 3946
APC/ECSH 13 port 33?
SPA/CAPE/ANDE-2 13 stbd 265
ICU container 54
ANDE Active satellite 50
ANDE Passive satellite 25
RMS Sill 410
OBSS Sill 382?
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Cargo total 13645 kg?




LRO and LCROSS
--------------

LRO, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter,
entered a 220 x 3100 km x 90 deg lunar orbit on Jun 23. The four 80N
thrusters burned from 0947 to 1026 UTC. On Jun 24 at 1056 UTC a 12 min
LOI-2 burn reduced the orbit to 200 x 1680 km; at 1032 UTC on Jun 25
LOI-3 sent LRO to a 199 x 740 km x 89.93 deg path; and LOI-4 at 1225 on
Jun 26 resulted in a roughly 200 x 200 km orbit. On Jun 27 it entered
the commissioning orbit of 31 x 209 km x 90.5 deg, and its first high
resolution images of the lunar surface are now being returned. By Aug 3,
when the commissioning orbit will have been perturbed to 43 x 197 km x
89.7 deg, LRO will be ready to go lower, entering an orbit which ranges
from 47 x 53 km at its most circular to 35 x 66 km at its most
elliptical.

LCROSS flew 3270 km from the Moon at 1030 UTC on Jun 23 and now
is in an orbit that will take it out to 582000 km from the Earth.
It will impact the Moon in October.


USA 193
-------

It had been thought that all the debris from the USA 193 satellite,
destroyed by an Aegis SM-3 missile on 2008 Feb 21, had reentered.
However during a routine update of debris found in orbit, a new
piece of the satellite has been found in a 234 x 934 km x 56.1 deg
orbit and cataloged as 2006-057GH.

GOES 14
------

A new Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite is in orbit. The
GOES satellites provide wide-area weather imaging and solar flare
monitoring. GOES O, which became GOES 14 after reaching geostationary
orbit on Jul 9, went up on a Delta 4 Medium+ variant with a 4-meter
fairing and two strap-on solid boosters. The three Delta burns put it
sucessively in 187 x 554 km x 28.5 deg, 268 x 34603 km x 26.6 deg, and
6634 x 35155 km x 12.0 deg orbits. The on-board R-4D apogee engine
raised the orbit to geostationary. GOES O is a 601 class satellite built
by Boeing (El Segundo). Early orbit checkout is done by NASA Goddard,
and then it will be controlled by the NOAA satellite center in Suitland,
Maryland.

Sirius FM5
----------

Sirius XM Radio's FM5 satellite was launched on Jun 30 from Baykonur.
The Loral 1300-class satellite with a launch mass of 5976 kg and a dry
mass of 2900 kg flew aboard an ILS/Krunichev Proton-M/Briz-M. The Proton
reached a suborbital trajectory (unusually, the coopi.khrunichev.ru site
did not give the parameters, which were probably around -750 x 150 km x
51.6 deg) and separated from Briz. The Briz burns reached 179 x 179 km x
51.6 deg, 270 x 5000 km x 50.3 deg, 325 x 14534 km x 49.6 deg, 425 x
35818 x 49.2 deg and 4201 x 35975 km x 23.0 deg. The Briz propellant
tank was jettisoned into the third orbit of this sequence. Briz
separated from Sirius FM5 at 0423 UTC on Jul 1. By Jul 13 FM5
was drifting past 96 deg W in a 35773 x 35781 km x 0.1 deg orbit.

Terrestar 1
-----------

The second launch of a Loral 1300 satellite in two days was the most
massive communications satellite to date, the 6910 kg Terrestar 1,
which carries an 18-meter deployable antenna for S-band mobile communications.
Ariane 5ECA vehicle 547 reached an initial -1159 x 176 km x 11.8 deg
trajectory and then a 235 x 35901 km x 6.0 deg transfer orbit.
(The suborbital part of the trajectory, quoted in the EADS press kit,
has an unusually high inclination for a Kourou launch and may be a typo).
Terrestar Networks is based in Reston, Virginia.

The histories of Terrestar Corp, its subsidiary Terrestar Networks, and
the related L-band companies SkyTerra Communications and SkyTerra LP are
very tangled. As far as I understand it - which is not very far - it
goes like this:

1995-1996: AMSC (American Mobile Satellite Co) launched AMSC-1, and TMI (Telesat
Mobile, Canada) launched M-SAT 1, two similar L-band M-SAT satellites.
2000: AMSC becomes Motient
2001: Motient and TMI spin off MSV (Mobile Satellite Ventures) as a
joint venture to operate the M-SATs
2001? Motient creates Terrestar Networks to build S-band system,
with other investors.
2003?: SkyTerra Communications (SkyTC) is an
investor in MSV and to some extent in Terrestar.
2006: Big ownership swap.
- MSV becomes a subsidiary of SkyTC
- Terrestar Networks becomes a subsidiary of Motient
2007: Motient renamed Terrestar Corp.
2008: MSV renamed SkyTerra LP, planning launch of SkyTerra 1 and 2.

DICE
----

The University of Colorado's suborbital Diffuse Interstellar Cloud
Experiment was launched from White Sands on Jun 29. DICE, flown on Black
Brant 9 rocket flight NASA 36.244UG, carried a high-resolution far
ultraviolet spectrograph intended to study the O VI line along two lines
of sight towards Sco.

Kosmos-2450
-----------

Russia's Kobal't-M class spy satellite, Kosmos-2450, had been in orbit
for 65 days on Jul 3, when it was in a 177 x 325 km x 67.1 deg orbit.
Typical lifetimes for this time of satellite range from 75 to 120 days.
In an unusual maneuver, on Jun 7 at 2332 UTC Kosmos-2450 raised its
orbit from 181 x 325 km to 247 x 381 km and then 26.5 hours later
lowered it again to 178 x 357 km, presumably shifting the ground track
to cover a different set of targets. Regular orbit raising burns were
carried out on May 2, May 14, May 27 and Jun 21.

Kosmos-2451/2452/2453
---------------------

Three military communications satellites were launched from Plesetsk by
a Rokot launch vehicle on Jul 6. According to Bob Christy, at least two
of them are of the Strela-3 type, based on their radio transmissions.
Rokot is a converted UR-100N two-stage missile with a Briz-KM third
stage. The Kosmos satellites were inserted into a 1500 x 1505 km x 82.5
deg orbit; the Briz-KM then lowered itself to a 1204 x 1504 km orbit.
The satellites have a mass of around 225 kg each.

Razaksat
--------

The Malaysian RazakSat imaging satellite was launched from Omelek Island
in the Pacific by SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket on Jul 14 at 0336 UTC.
By 0345 UTC RazakSat, attached to the Falcon 1 second stage, was
in parking orbit, probably around 200 x 685 km. The second burn at 0424
UTC was followed by separation of the satellite into an orbit of 665 x
688 km x 9.0 deg. The second stage ended up in a slightly lower
616 x 687 x 9.1 deg orbit.


Table of Recent (orbital) Launches
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Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
May 5 2024 STSS-ATRR Delta 7920-10C Vandenberg SLC2W Tech 23A
May 7 1837 Progress M-02M Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 24A
May 11 1802 Atlantis STS-125 Space Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 25A
May 14 1312 Herschel ) Ariane 5ECA Kourou ELA3 Astronomy 26A
Planck ) Astronomy 26B
May 16 0057 Protostar-2 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur Comms 27A
May 19 2355 Tacsat 3 ) Minotaur I Wallops LA0B Imaging 28A
Pharmasat ) Bio 28
CP6 ) Tech 28
HawkSat-1 ) Tech 28
Aerocube 3 ) Tech 28
May 21 2153 Meridian-2? Soyuz-2-1a/Fregat Plesetsk LC43/4 Comms 29A
May 27 1034 Soyuz TMA-15 Soyuz-FG Baykonur LC1 Spaceship 30A
Jun 18 2132 LRO ) Atlas V 401 Canaveral SLC41 Lunar probe 31A
LCROSS ) Lunar probe 31B
Jun 21 2150 Measat 3a Zenit-3SLB Baykonur LC45 Comms 32A
Jun 27 2251 GOES 14 Delta 4M+(4,2) Canaveral SLC37B Weather 33A
Jun 30 1910 Sirius FM5 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur Radio 34A
Jul 1 1752 Terrestar 1 Ariane 5ECA Kourou ELA3 Comms 35A
Jul 6 0126 Kosmos-2451 ) Rokot Plesetsk LC133? Comms 36A
Kosmos-2452 ) 36B
Kosmos-2453 ) 36C
Jul 14 0336 Razaksat Falcon 1 Omelek I. Imaging 37A
Jul 15 2203 Endeavour STS-127 ) Space Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 38A
Kibo Exposed Facil)

Table of Recent (suborbital) Launches
----------------------------------

Date UT Payload/Flt Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission Apogee/km
Apr 10 0810 RV Topol' Plesetsk Op Test 1000?
Apr 15 0450 Prithvi RV Prithvi II Chandipur Test 80?
Apr 17 1118 FalconLaunch 7 FalconLaunch White Sands Test 108
May 7 HIFIRE-0 Terrier Orion? Woomera Hypersonic 200?
May 19 0436 RV Agni 2 Chandipur Test 300?
May 20 RV Sejjil-2 Semnan Test 800
May 22 1032 MAPHEUS Nike Orion Esrange Micrograv 140
May 28 1652 NASA 41.080NR Terrier Orion Wallops Hypersonic 130?
(SOAREX VII)
May 29 1325 Maracati 1 Improved Orion Alcantara Test 93
Jun 6 ABL Target Terrier Lynx San Nicolas Target 100?
Jun 13 ABL Target Terrier Lynx San Nicolas Target 100?
Jun 26 0930 NASA 41.083UO Terrier Orion Wallops Education 117
Jun 29 0730 NASA 36.244UG Black Brant 9 White Sands UV Astron 300?
Jun 29 1001 Mk 12 RV ) Minuteman 3 Vandenberg Op Test 1300?
Mk 12 RV ) (GT199)
Mk 12 RV )
Jul 13 RV (x 10?) Sineva K-84, N Pole Test 1000?
Jul 14 RV (x 10?) Sineva K-117, N Pole Test 1000?

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