Planet4589
October 15th 07, 11:04 PM
Jonathan's Space Report
No. 586 2007 Oct 14, Somerville, MA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shuttle and Station
-------------------
Soyuz TMA-11 was launched at 1322 UTC on Oct 10. The spaceship is
production number 221, and flies the ISS 15S mission carrying both the
Expedition 16 long stay crew and the EP-13 visiting crew to the Space
Station. The Soyuz crew is commanded by Yuriy Malenchenko and includes
NASA's Peggy Whitson and Malaysia's Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor Al Masrie.
They docked with the Station's Zarya module at 1450 UTC on Oct 12.
Aboard the station, Whitson takes command as Expedition 16 commander,
with Malenchenko as flight engineer, together with second flight engineer
Clay Anderson who has been aboard since August. Expedition 15 crew
Fyodor Yurchikin and Oleg Kotov will return to Earth on Soyuz TMA-10
together with EP-13 crewmember Shukor Al Masrie.
Orbiter OV-103 Discovery is now on pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center awaiting
launch on mission STS-120.
The Progress M-60 cargo ship undocked from Zvezda at 0037 UTC on Sep 19
and was used for plasma depletion experiments before being deorbited
over the Pacific at 1901 UTC on Sep 25. Progress M-61 remains docked at
Pirs. Soyuz TMA-10 undocked from Zarya at 1920 UTC on Sep 27 and docked
with Zvezda at 1947 UTC.
Dawn
----
The Dawn space probe was launched towards the asteroid belt on Sep 27.
Congratulations to loyal reader and Dawn project engineer Marc Rayman;
I recommend his journal at http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/journal.asp
Dawn is the 9th NASA Discovery mission and will orbit the dwarf planet
Ceres and the large asteroid Vesta; it follows on from the successful
Deep Space 1 technology mission in using ion drive for NASA planetary
exploration. It has 3 NSTAR xenon ion thrusters, with 425 kg of xenon
propellant for interplanetary travel, and 12 0.9-Newton MR-103G
hydrazine thrusters with 46 kg of propellant for asteroid orbit
insertion. The spacecraft was built by Orbital/Dulles using a
Star-2-derived bus with a dry mass of 747 kg, and is 1.8 x 1.3m in size
with two large 19.7-meter-span solar arrays to provide power for the ion
drive. Dawn has three main instruments: the Framing Cameras, the VIR
visible/IR mapping spectrometer, and the GRaND gamma ray and neutron
spectrometer. The mission is managed by JPL and principal investigator
is Chris Russell of UCLA.
United Launch Alliance carried out the launch on a Boeing Delta 7925H at
1134 UTC on Sep 27. At 1142 UTC the Delta second stage reached a 185 x
186 km Earth parking orbit; the second burn was at 1225 UTC. After a
third, depletion, burn the second stage was in a 170 x 6776 km x 26.7
deg orbit, but I don't have the post-second-burn orbit - it was probably
about 185 x 6835 km with a velocity at perigee of 9.01 km/s. The PAM-D
solid third stage fired at 1229 UTC to accelerate the probe to an escape
velocity of 11.50 km/s; at 1236 UTC the stage separated after releasing
two small despin weights on cables. Dawn's hyperbolic escape orbit of
209 x -83420 km x 28.9 deg had an asymptotic velocity of 3.36 km/s
(specific energy C3 = 11.319 km**2/s**2). Dawn passed lunar orbit at
about 1430 UTC on Sep 28 and left the Earth's sphere of influence on Sep
30. Dawn is now in a 1.00 x 1.62 AU solar orbit inclined 0.5 deg to the
ecliptic; after a Mars flyby in Feb 2009 it will reach Vesta in 2011 and
Ceres in 2015. The first test burn of the ion engine on Oct 6 was
successful.
Kaguya
------
Japan's Kaguya moon probe was in a 2243 x 378132 km cislunar transfer orbit
by Sep 30; on Oct 3 at 2100 UTC it entered a 101 x 11741 km x 95 deg
lunar orbit. The probe is now lowering its orbit to 100 km circular;
the Okina (R-Star) subsatellite was ejected into a 115 x 2399 km
orbit at 0036 UTC on Oct 9, and the Ouna (VRAD) subsatellite
was ejected at 0428 UTC on Oct 12 into a 127 x 795 km orbit.
Ariane L526
-----------
Intelsat IS-11 and Optus D2 were launched by Ariane 5GS vehicle L526.
Both are Orbital Star-2 communications satellites; IS-11 provides
Atlantic region C and Ku-band comms for Intelsat, and Optus D2
is a Ku-band satellite for Australia/New Zealand region TV, internet,
telecom and data. By Oct 12 both had reached geosynchronous altitude.
WGS SV-1
--------
The USAF's first Wideband Global Satcom satellite was launched by United
Launch Alliance Atlas V model 421, serial AV-011 on Oct 11 into
a 477 x 66847 km x 20.1 deg transfer orbit. The satellite replaces the
DSCS military communications satellites and carries X-band and Ka-band
communications payloads. WGS uses a Boeing 702 bus.
Foton M-3
---------
The Foton M-3 microgravity satellite was deorbited at 0723 UTC on Sep 26
and landed at 0758 UTC in Kazakhstan, returing its Russian/European
microgravity payload to Earth.
One day earlier, on Sep 25 at 0447 UTC, the ESA YES-2 tether was
deployed from the battery pack on the front end of Foton. The tether was
then severed at the battery pack end at about 0720 UTC, after it had
reached only 8.5 km of its planned 30 km length. The tiny 5 kg Fotino
reentry capsule separated from the attached MASS data support system
shortly afterwards. The idea was that the dynamics of space tethers let
you send a capsule back to Earth without using a heavy retro-rocket; as
the tether swings beneath the parent satellite, if you wait until the
velocity of the capsule is too low for orbit at that height and then
release it, it will reenter for free. It is not yet known what actually
happened to the capsule; my best guess is that both MASS/tether and
Fotino did reenter sometime on Sep 25 either on their first orbit or
shortly afterwards. The next day at Foton deorbit, the battery pack and
its attached YES2 deployer was ejected into a 257 x 275 km orbit and two
retrorocket covers were ejected into higher 265 x 500 km orbits.
CBERS-2B
--------
On Sep 21, the China-Brazil CBERS-2B remote sensing satellite raised its
orbit to an operational altitude of 773 km.
Table of Recent (orbital) Launches
----------------------------------
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Sep 2 1250 Insat 4CR GSLV SDSC Comms 37A
Sep 5 2243 JCSAT 11 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur Comms F03
Sep 11 1305 Kosmos-2429 Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC132/1 Navigation 38A
Sep 14 0131 Kaguya H-IIA 2022 Tanegashima Moon probe 39A
Sep 14 1100 Foton M-3 ) Soyuz-U Baykonur Micrograv 40A
YES-2 ) Tech 40C
Fotino ) Tech 40
MASS ) Tech 40
Sep 18 1835 WorldView 1 Delta 7920 Vandenberg SLC2W Imaging 41A
Sep 19 0326 CBERS-2B Chang Zheng 4B Taiyuan Imaging 42A
Sep 27 1134 Dawn Delta 7925H Canaveral SLC17B Probe 43A
Oct 5 2202 Intelsat IS-11 ) Ariane 5GS Kourou ELA3 Comms 44A
Optus D-2 ) Comms 44B
Oct 10 1322 Soyuz TMA-11 Soyuz-FG Baykonur LC1 Spaceship 45A
Oct 11 0022 WGS SV-1 Atlas V 421 Canaveral SLC41 Comms 46A
..-------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 |
| Somerville MA 02143 | inter : |
| USA | |
'-------------------------------------------------------------------------'
No. 586 2007 Oct 14, Somerville, MA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shuttle and Station
-------------------
Soyuz TMA-11 was launched at 1322 UTC on Oct 10. The spaceship is
production number 221, and flies the ISS 15S mission carrying both the
Expedition 16 long stay crew and the EP-13 visiting crew to the Space
Station. The Soyuz crew is commanded by Yuriy Malenchenko and includes
NASA's Peggy Whitson and Malaysia's Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor Al Masrie.
They docked with the Station's Zarya module at 1450 UTC on Oct 12.
Aboard the station, Whitson takes command as Expedition 16 commander,
with Malenchenko as flight engineer, together with second flight engineer
Clay Anderson who has been aboard since August. Expedition 15 crew
Fyodor Yurchikin and Oleg Kotov will return to Earth on Soyuz TMA-10
together with EP-13 crewmember Shukor Al Masrie.
Orbiter OV-103 Discovery is now on pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center awaiting
launch on mission STS-120.
The Progress M-60 cargo ship undocked from Zvezda at 0037 UTC on Sep 19
and was used for plasma depletion experiments before being deorbited
over the Pacific at 1901 UTC on Sep 25. Progress M-61 remains docked at
Pirs. Soyuz TMA-10 undocked from Zarya at 1920 UTC on Sep 27 and docked
with Zvezda at 1947 UTC.
Dawn
----
The Dawn space probe was launched towards the asteroid belt on Sep 27.
Congratulations to loyal reader and Dawn project engineer Marc Rayman;
I recommend his journal at http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/journal.asp
Dawn is the 9th NASA Discovery mission and will orbit the dwarf planet
Ceres and the large asteroid Vesta; it follows on from the successful
Deep Space 1 technology mission in using ion drive for NASA planetary
exploration. It has 3 NSTAR xenon ion thrusters, with 425 kg of xenon
propellant for interplanetary travel, and 12 0.9-Newton MR-103G
hydrazine thrusters with 46 kg of propellant for asteroid orbit
insertion. The spacecraft was built by Orbital/Dulles using a
Star-2-derived bus with a dry mass of 747 kg, and is 1.8 x 1.3m in size
with two large 19.7-meter-span solar arrays to provide power for the ion
drive. Dawn has three main instruments: the Framing Cameras, the VIR
visible/IR mapping spectrometer, and the GRaND gamma ray and neutron
spectrometer. The mission is managed by JPL and principal investigator
is Chris Russell of UCLA.
United Launch Alliance carried out the launch on a Boeing Delta 7925H at
1134 UTC on Sep 27. At 1142 UTC the Delta second stage reached a 185 x
186 km Earth parking orbit; the second burn was at 1225 UTC. After a
third, depletion, burn the second stage was in a 170 x 6776 km x 26.7
deg orbit, but I don't have the post-second-burn orbit - it was probably
about 185 x 6835 km with a velocity at perigee of 9.01 km/s. The PAM-D
solid third stage fired at 1229 UTC to accelerate the probe to an escape
velocity of 11.50 km/s; at 1236 UTC the stage separated after releasing
two small despin weights on cables. Dawn's hyperbolic escape orbit of
209 x -83420 km x 28.9 deg had an asymptotic velocity of 3.36 km/s
(specific energy C3 = 11.319 km**2/s**2). Dawn passed lunar orbit at
about 1430 UTC on Sep 28 and left the Earth's sphere of influence on Sep
30. Dawn is now in a 1.00 x 1.62 AU solar orbit inclined 0.5 deg to the
ecliptic; after a Mars flyby in Feb 2009 it will reach Vesta in 2011 and
Ceres in 2015. The first test burn of the ion engine on Oct 6 was
successful.
Kaguya
------
Japan's Kaguya moon probe was in a 2243 x 378132 km cislunar transfer orbit
by Sep 30; on Oct 3 at 2100 UTC it entered a 101 x 11741 km x 95 deg
lunar orbit. The probe is now lowering its orbit to 100 km circular;
the Okina (R-Star) subsatellite was ejected into a 115 x 2399 km
orbit at 0036 UTC on Oct 9, and the Ouna (VRAD) subsatellite
was ejected at 0428 UTC on Oct 12 into a 127 x 795 km orbit.
Ariane L526
-----------
Intelsat IS-11 and Optus D2 were launched by Ariane 5GS vehicle L526.
Both are Orbital Star-2 communications satellites; IS-11 provides
Atlantic region C and Ku-band comms for Intelsat, and Optus D2
is a Ku-band satellite for Australia/New Zealand region TV, internet,
telecom and data. By Oct 12 both had reached geosynchronous altitude.
WGS SV-1
--------
The USAF's first Wideband Global Satcom satellite was launched by United
Launch Alliance Atlas V model 421, serial AV-011 on Oct 11 into
a 477 x 66847 km x 20.1 deg transfer orbit. The satellite replaces the
DSCS military communications satellites and carries X-band and Ka-band
communications payloads. WGS uses a Boeing 702 bus.
Foton M-3
---------
The Foton M-3 microgravity satellite was deorbited at 0723 UTC on Sep 26
and landed at 0758 UTC in Kazakhstan, returing its Russian/European
microgravity payload to Earth.
One day earlier, on Sep 25 at 0447 UTC, the ESA YES-2 tether was
deployed from the battery pack on the front end of Foton. The tether was
then severed at the battery pack end at about 0720 UTC, after it had
reached only 8.5 km of its planned 30 km length. The tiny 5 kg Fotino
reentry capsule separated from the attached MASS data support system
shortly afterwards. The idea was that the dynamics of space tethers let
you send a capsule back to Earth without using a heavy retro-rocket; as
the tether swings beneath the parent satellite, if you wait until the
velocity of the capsule is too low for orbit at that height and then
release it, it will reenter for free. It is not yet known what actually
happened to the capsule; my best guess is that both MASS/tether and
Fotino did reenter sometime on Sep 25 either on their first orbit or
shortly afterwards. The next day at Foton deorbit, the battery pack and
its attached YES2 deployer was ejected into a 257 x 275 km orbit and two
retrorocket covers were ejected into higher 265 x 500 km orbits.
CBERS-2B
--------
On Sep 21, the China-Brazil CBERS-2B remote sensing satellite raised its
orbit to an operational altitude of 773 km.
Table of Recent (orbital) Launches
----------------------------------
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Sep 2 1250 Insat 4CR GSLV SDSC Comms 37A
Sep 5 2243 JCSAT 11 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur Comms F03
Sep 11 1305 Kosmos-2429 Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC132/1 Navigation 38A
Sep 14 0131 Kaguya H-IIA 2022 Tanegashima Moon probe 39A
Sep 14 1100 Foton M-3 ) Soyuz-U Baykonur Micrograv 40A
YES-2 ) Tech 40C
Fotino ) Tech 40
MASS ) Tech 40
Sep 18 1835 WorldView 1 Delta 7920 Vandenberg SLC2W Imaging 41A
Sep 19 0326 CBERS-2B Chang Zheng 4B Taiyuan Imaging 42A
Sep 27 1134 Dawn Delta 7925H Canaveral SLC17B Probe 43A
Oct 5 2202 Intelsat IS-11 ) Ariane 5GS Kourou ELA3 Comms 44A
Optus D-2 ) Comms 44B
Oct 10 1322 Soyuz TMA-11 Soyuz-FG Baykonur LC1 Spaceship 45A
Oct 11 0022 WGS SV-1 Atlas V 421 Canaveral SLC41 Comms 46A
..-------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 |
| Somerville MA 02143 | inter : |
| USA | |
'-------------------------------------------------------------------------'