Jonathan’s Space Report, No. 609
Shuttle and Station
——————–
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
——-
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
———————————-
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
———————————-
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
.-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Somerville MA 02143 | inter : jcm@host.planet4589.org | | USA | jcm@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://www.planet4589.org/jsr.html | | Back issues: http://www.planet4589.org/space/jsr/back | | Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@host.planet4589.org, (un)subscribe jsr | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'
