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Planet4589
April 3rd 09, 11:59 PM
Jonathan's Space Report
No. 609 2009 Apr 3 Pasadena, CA
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Shuttle and Station
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The Expedition 18 crew of Michael Fincke and Yuriy Lonchakov continue
work on board ISS and have now been joined by Expedition 19 crewmembers
Gennadiy Padalka, Mike Barratt, and Koichi Wakata, and visiting
spaceflight-participant Charles Simonyi. Progress M-66 is docked to the
Pirs module, Soyuz TMA-13 to Zarya and Soyuz TMA-14 to Zvezda. Japanese
astronaut Koichi Wakata became a member of the Station crew at around
2330 UTC on Mar 17, replacing Sandra Magnus who joined the STS-119 crew
and departed aboard Discovery.

The final bit of the Station's truss, S6, was unberthed from
Discovery's payload bay at 1609 UTC on Mar 18. On Mar 19 astronauts
Steve Swanson and Ricky Arnold, in EMU spacesuits 3017 and 3006, made a
spacewalk from the Quest module to supervise the mating of the S6 truss
segment to the end of the S5 segment on ISS. S6 made contact with S5 at
1817 UTC and was bolted in place by 1906 UTC. The EVA began with airlock
depress at 1712 UTC, hatch open at 1715, hatch close at 2320, and
repress at 2323.

Four small fabric thermal covers about 0.5m across were manually
jettisoned at 2223-2230 UTC. On Mar 20, the solar array wings were
deployed smoothly from the new truss segment.

The second spacewalk on Mar 21 was less successful, with Swanson and
Joe Acaba (in suits 3017 and 3005) failing to deploy the UCCAS-1 payload
attachment platform from the P3 truss. The astronauts were
in a depressurized environment from 1647 to 2321 UTC, with hatch open/close
at 1650 to 2316. Astronauts Acaba and Arnold, on a third spacewalk on Mar 23,
again failed to deploy UCCAS-1, although other spacewalk tasks were
achieved, including relocating one of the CETA carts. Hatch open/close
was from 1536 to 2200 UTC.

Discovery undocked at 1953 UTC on Mar 25. On Mar 28 it fired its
engines for the deorbit burn at 1808:14 UTC and landed on runway 15
at Kennedy Space Center at 1913:17 UTC.

Soyuz spacecraft serial no. 224, Soyuz TMA-14, was launched from Baykonur on
Mar 26 carrying the Expedition 19 crew of Gennadiy Padalka and Michael
Barratt, with visiting crew member Charles Simonyi, on his second 'space
tourist' flight. The ship docked to the Zvezda aft port at 1305 UTC
on Mar 28.


GPS 49
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Navstar satellite SVN 49 is the 20th Block IIR to be launched,
and carries the first civil L5 signal which will be standard on the forthcoming
Block IIF series of satellites. GPS SVN 49 was launched on Mar 24
from Cape Canaveral and fired its apogee motor on Mar 26.

Table of Recent (orbital) Launches
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Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Mar 7 0350 Kepler Delta 7920-10L Canaveral SLC17B Astronomy 11A
Mar 15 2343 Discovery STS-119 Space Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 12A
Mar 17 1421 GOCE Rokot Plesetsk LC133/3 Science 13A
Mar 24 0834 GPS 49 Delta 7925 Canaveral SLC17A Nav 14A
Mar 26 1149 Soyuz TMA-14 Soyuz-FG Baykonur LC1 Spaceship 15A

Table of Recent (suborbital) Launches
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Date UT Payload/Flt Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission Apogee/km
Mar 6 1054 Target Dhanush Ship, Chandipur Target 120
Mar 6 1100? Interceptor Prithvi Chandipur IC4 ABM Test 75?
Mar 12 1008 SSC REXUS 6 Imp. Orion Esrange Ionos./Tech 88
Mar 13 0600 SSC REXUS 5 Imp. Orion Esrange Atmos./Tech 87
Mar 20 1104 NASA 40.023UE Black Brant XII Poker Flat Aurora 560?
+ 4 subpayloads

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| Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 |
| Somerville MA 02143 | inter : |
| USA | |
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