Jonathan's Space Report, No. 576

Jonathan's Space Report
No. 576 2007 Feb 2, Somerville, MA
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Shuttle and Station
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Discovery undocked at 2210 UTC on Dec 19. Remaining aboard the station
are Mike Lopez-Alegria, Mikhail Tyurin, and Sunita Williams. The Progress M-59
robotic cargo vehicle was launched at 0212 UTC on Jan 18 and docked
with the Pirs module on Jan 20. Progress M-57 undocked from Pirs
and was deorbited over the Pacific; M-58 remains docked to Zvezda with
its antenna all tangled up with the rear of the module.

Lopez-Alegria and Williams made a spacewalk on Jan 31 to reconfigure the
ammonia cooling system. The Quest airlock was depressurized at 1510 UTC
with hatch open at 1513 UTC; the hatch was closed again at 2250 UTC and
after a pause to check for ammonia contamination the airlock was
repressurized at 2309 UTC.

Chinese Antisatellite Test
--------------------------

According to US government sources, China has carried out a test of an
kinetic-energy antisatellite weapon. The intercept occurred at 2226
UTC on Jan 11, destroying China's own elderly Feng Yun 1C weather
satellite which was launched in 1999. The weapon was launched on a
suborbital medium range ballistic missile, reportedly from the Xichang
space center. The FY-1C was in an 843 x 862 km x 98.7 deg orbit; the
initial debris cataloged ranges from 165 x 850 km to 850 x 3500 km, a
wide range of heights indicating an energetic fragmentation with
delta-Vs along the direction of motion of -190 to +550 m/s. Of course,
we are missing the tail of dV significantly less than -190 since those
objects would reenter immediately. As of Jan 27, over 500 objects had
been cataloged by the US, mostly with velocities of order 500m/s or less
relative to the original orbit.

Xichang's a bit of a surprise - I would have expected a launch from
Taiyuan space center which is where most recent Chinese military
ballistic missiles have been tested. Xichang is normally used for
CZ-3-class liquid-propellant geostationary launch vehicles.

The type of missile used has not been identified; the most likely
candidate is probably the solid-fuel DF-21 missile. CNN quoted US
sources as indicating that this is the fourth launch in the program
following three previous failures; another source suggests to me that
there was only one previous failure, and yet other reports give
other numbers - the best we can say right now is that the situation
remains confused.

This is the first known antisatellite intercept since the USA's Delta 180
flight in 1986 (not counting the accidental events of Progress/Spektr
and DART/MUBLCOM, which were due to lousy driving and not deliberate
weapons tests).

COROT
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The French astronomy satellite COROT was launched on Dec 27 by the first
Soyuz-2-1b rocket. The launch was carried out under the auspices of
Starsem, the French launch services provider which markets Soyuz
commercially. Soyuz-2-1a has modern avionics compared to the old
Soyuz-U, while the 14A14 Soyuz-2-1b introduces a new third stage engine,
the Khimavtomatiki RD-0124 (14D23), replacing the RD-0110 (11D55)
series in service since the 1960s. The 605 kg COROT carries a 0.30m
optical telescope with two off-axis parabolic mirrors, used to search
for extrasolar planets by detecting the subtle dimming in brightness as
they pass in front of their parent stars. COROT is operated by the French
space agency CNES and was built by Alcatel Alenia Space (Cannes) using
the Proteus small satellite bus.

The Soyuz-2-1b third stage entered a 215 x 227 km x 90.0 deg orbit
(unlike Soyuz-2-1a launches in which the third stage has been
suborbital). The Fregat stage then made two burns to a 895 x 906 km x 90.0
deg orbit to deploy COROT, and a third burn to remove itself from
orbit and reenter.

GLONASS
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The three GLONASS-M satellites launched in December are now being
referred to as Kosmos-2424, 2425, 2426 by the GLONASS control center
web site. They are Uragan-M satellites no. 715, 716 and 717.
They are in Plane 2 of the system; all the other operating satellites
are in Planes 1 and 3.

NSS 8
-----

Boeing Sea Launch suffered a dramatic failure on Jan 30 when the
Ukrainian/Russian Zenit-3SL launch vehicle failed just after ignition
and fell back onto its floating launch platform. The New Skies NSS 8
communications satellite payload was destroyed. Video showed the launch
platform enveloped in a spectacular explosion, but a statement on
the RKK Energiya web site claims that the damage is not critical.

Intelsat
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Following Intelsat's acquisition of Panamsat satellites, the names of a
number of satellites are being changed. For example, PAS 7 will now be
"Intelsat 7" or "IS-7". Of course, there is also a type of satellite
called "Intelsat VII". Similarly, "Intelsat 10" is the former PAS 10,
but there is also an "Intelsat 10-02" from the 10th generation of the
old Intelsat fleet; "Intelsat 10" and "Intelsat 10-02" are unrelated and
"Intelsat 10" is not an Intelsat 10 class satellite. I guarantee this
will cause endless confusion. Although I am generally strict about using
the satellite names assigned by the satellite owner, in this case I
recommend using the slightly incorrect "Intelsat IS-7" and "Intelsat
IS-10" to remove the ambiguity.


PSLV-C7
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The first orbital launch of 2007 was made by the Indian Space Research
Organization (ISRO). The main payloads of Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle C7
were Cartosat-2 and the SRE recovery experiment. Two picosatellites
were also deployed: Pehuensat for Argentina and LAPAN-TUBsat for Indonesia.

Cartosat-2 is a land imager with meter-class resolution and a mass of 680 kg.
The Space Recovery Experiment vehicle will carry out microgravity
experiments and then use a liquid engine for a deorbit burn. It carries
a rounded conical heat shield and will parachute down to the Bay of Bengal
for recovery.

The 6 kg Pehuensat remained attached to the Dual Launch Adapter which
was used to carry Cartosat-2 above SRE. It is a project of
Universidad Nacional del Comahue and AMSAT-LU.

LAPAN-Tubsat carries a 5-meter imaging camera. It was developed with
help from TUB (Berlin Technical University) whose previous TUBSAT satellites
included one for Morocco. Mass is 56 kg.

India's SRE-1 was deorbited and landed successfully in the Bay of Bengal
near 13.3N 81.4E on Jan 22. The satellite was launched into a 620 x 640 km
polar orbit on Jan 10; the orbit was lowered to 485 x 643 km on Jan 20.
The 10-minute deorbit burn began at 0330 UTC Jan 22, with entry at 0407 and
splashdown at 0416 UTC.

The US, Russia, China, Japan and the European Space Agency have also recovered
spacecraft from orbit.




Table of Recent Launches
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Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Dec 8 0053 Fengyun 2D Chang Zheng 3A Xichang Weather 53B
Dec 8 2208 WildBlue 1 ) Ariane 5ECA Kourou ELA3 Comms 54A
AMC 18 ) Comms 54B
Dec 10 0147 Discovery STS-116 Shuttle Kennedy LC39B Spaceship 55A
Dec 11 2328 Measat 3 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC200/39 Comms 56A
Dec 14 2100 USA-193 (NROL-21) Delta 7920 Vandenberg SLC2W Unknown 57A
Dec 16 1200 Tacsat 2 ) Minotaur Wallops LA0B Imaging/Tech 58A
Genesat-1 )
Dec 18 0632 ETS-8 H2A 204 Tanegashima Comms 59A
Dec 19 1400 SAR-Lupe 1 Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC132/1 Radar 60A
Dec 21 0019 MEPSI-2A/2B - Discovery, LEO Tech 55B
Dec 21 0156 RAFT ) Discovery, LEO Calibration 55C
NMARS ) Comms 55D
Dec 21 1822 ANDE-MAA ) Discovery, LEO Science 55J
FCAL ) Calibration 55F
Dec 24 0834 Meridian No. 1 Soyuz-2-1A Plesetsk LC43/4 Comms 61A
Dec 25 2018 Glonass-M ) Proton-K/DM-2 Baykonur LC81/24 Navigation 62A
Glonass-M ) Navigation 62B
Glonass-M ) Navigation 62C
Dec 27 1423 COROT Soyuz-2-1B Baykonur LC31/6 Astronomy 63A
Jan 10 0416 Cartosat-2 ) PSLV Sriharikota LP1 Imaging 01B
SRE-1 ) Tech 01C
LAPAN Tubsat) Imaging 01A
Pehuensat ) Comms 01D
Jan 18 0212 Progress M-59 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 02A
Jan 30 2322 NSS 8 Zenit-3SL SL Odyssey, POR Comms F01

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| Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 |
| Somerville MA 02143 | inter : |
| USA | |
| |
| JSR: http://www.planet4589.org/jsr.html |
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