Jonathan’s Space Report No 429 2000 Jul 4
No 429
2000 Jul 4, Cambridge, MA
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Shuttle and Stations
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Soyuz TM-30 landed on Jun 16 at 0044 UTC. Zalyotin and Kaleri closed the
hatch to Mir at 1817 UTC on Jun 15 and undocked at 0124 UT on Jun 16.
The deorbit burn was at 0352 UTC; a few minutes later the orbital module
and service module were jettisoned, with the central descent module
reentering for a landing at 0044 UTC near Arkalyk in Kazakstan. The Mir
complex remains operational in automated mode.
Current Launches
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An Ekspress A communications satellite was launched on Jun 24. The
Krunichev Proton-K launch vehicle flew a standard profile to place the
Energiya Blok DM-2M upper stage in a low parking orbit at 51.6 deg
inclination. Two Blok DM burns then delivered Ekspress A No. 3 to
geostationary orbit; on Jul 3 it was in a drift orbit of 35965 x 36081
km x 0.2 deg. Ekspress A No. 3 will use the on-orbit name Ekspress 3A.
China launched its second Fengyun-2 weather satellite on Jun 25 using a
Chang Zheng 3 three-stage launch vehicle. The CZ-3 third stage and the
FY-2 satellite were placed in geostationary transfer orbit. The CZ-3
took off from Xichang at 1150 UTC; the third stage placed it in a
parking orbit at 1201 UTC and reignited for a second burn to transfer
orbit with spacecraft separation at 1213 UTC. FY-2 is around 1400 kg and
is spin-stabilized, similar to the older generation GOES satellites and
the Himawari and Meteosat satellites. It carries a solid apogee motor
which is ejected after use; this appears to have fired early on Jun 26.
The first FY-2 was retired in April after a three year mission. By July
3, the new FY-2 was in a 35791 x 35804 km x 1.1 deg orbit drifting over
the Pacific.
A Nadezhda navigation/search and rescue satellite was launched from
Plesetsk on Jun 28. It was placed in a 684 x 708 km x 98.1 deg orbit,
the first ever sun-synchronous launch from the northern Plesetsk launch
site. Previous Nadezhdas went into 970 x 1000 km x 83 deg orbits. The
Kosmos-3M rocket appears to have launched southbound into a suborbital
trajectory with an apogee of around 700 km. A second stage 2 engine
burn around half an hour after launch circularized the orbit.
The Nadezhda satellite, built by AKO Polyot of Omsk, is an 800 kg
cylinder with a gravity gradient boom for stabilization and derives from
the Tsiklon navigation-communications satellite of the early 1970s,
which was the Soviet analog to the US Navy’s Transit. The system was
developed by the NPO PM organization in Krasnoyarsk but later
transferred to Polyot.
The 11F617 Tsiklon satellite flew from 1967 to 1978. Its successor the
11F627 Tsiklon-B (or Parus) began flight tests in 1974 and is still in
service. An advanced version used also for civilian navigation, the
11F643 Tsikada, first flew in 1976. The 11F643N modification of
Tsikada, referred to as Nadezhda, made 3 flights from 1982 to 1984
carrying French-developed COSPAS search and rescue packages.These were
followed by the operational 17F118 Nadezhda satellites, of which six
have now been launched.
After Nadezhda was placed in orbit it ejected two subsatellites,
Tsinghua and SNAP-1, built by Surrey Satellite (SSTL) of England.
Tsinghua is owned by Tsinghua University of Beijing and carries imager
and communications payloads. The 50 kg, 0.69 x 0.36 x 0.36m box-shaped
satellite is a standard SSTL microsat bus. Earlier SSTL microsats
deployed a 6-meter gravity gradient boom for stabilization; although
Tsinghua and its precursor UoSat-12 also carry such a boom, it isn’t
deployed as these new satellites have momentum wheels for 3-axis
stabilization.
The SNAP-1 Surrey Nanosatellite Applications Platform is a 6 kg
satellite with imager and propulsion and will test rendezvous techniques
by formation flying with Tsinghua.
The first Advanced Tracking and Data Relay Satellite was launched on Jun
30 by International Launch Services for NASA-Goddard. TDRS H, to be
named TDRS 8 in orbit, is a Hughes HS-601 class comsat with a dry mass
of around 1600 kg. It features an S-band phased array antenna and two
Ku/Ka band reflectors 4.6 meters in diameter. TDRS H was launched into a
subsynchronous transfer orbit of 237 x 27666 km x 27.0 deg by Lockheed
Martin’s Atlas Centaur AC-139, a two-stage Atlas IIA variant. AC-139
took off from Space Launch Complex 36A at 1255 UTC on Jun 30, entered a
167 x 577 km x 28.3 deg parking orbit at 1305 UTC, and made the Centaur
second burn to transfer orbit at 1321 UTC. TDRS H carries a
Primex/Marquardt R4D liquid apogee engine which will be used for orbit
raising. The previous TDRS satellites were built by TRW and launched from
the Space Shuttle with the Boeing Inertial Upper Stage (IUS).
TDRS missions
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TDRS 1 Challenger STS-6/IUS-1 Apr 1983
TDRS B Challenger STS 51L/IUS-3 Jan 1986 (launch failure)
TDRS 3 Discovery STS-26/IUS-7 Sep 1988
TDRS 4 Discovery STS-29/IUS-9 Mar 1989
TDRS 5 Atlantis STS-43/IUS-15 Aug 1991
TDRS 6 Endeavour STS-54/IUS-13 Jan 1993
TDRS 7 Discovery STS-70/IUS-26 Jul 1995
TDRS 8 Atlas AC-139 Jun 2000
Another in the current busy round of Krunichev Proton launches was
completed successfully on Jun 30. Its payload was an Energiya Blok DM3
commercial upper stage and the Sirius CD Radio satellite Sirius 1. This
satellite is not to be confused with Nordiska Satellit AB’s Sirius 1,
an HS-376 satellite launched in 1989 as Marcopolo 1 but purchased and
renamed by NSAB in Dec 1993 (I wish satellite operators would use
original names, you can bet this will be an endless source of
confusion!)
The new Sirius 1 is a Digital Audio Radio Satellite, and will be used
for transmission of S-band radio broadcasts direct to receivers in cars
in the United States. Sirius 1 is a Loral LS-1300 class satellite; dry
mass is probably around 1500-1600 kg. The Sirius satellites are launched
to inclined elliptical orbits, and the Proton used a new launch profile.
The third stage entered a 170 km parking orbit inclined at 64.8 deg
(the usual comsat parking orbit has a 51.6 deg inclination but the 64.8
deg is also used by GLONASS navigation satellites). The first
DM burn was to an orbit of approximately 170 x 6200 km; the second
burn, 2 hours after launch, left Sirius 1 in a 6166 x 47110 km x 63.4 deg
orbit. Quoted final orbit is 24000 x 47000 km, so presumably the satellite
apogee engine will be used to raise perigee.
Errata
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I am reliably informed that the change of name of STEP 5 to TSX 5 was
not prompted by any chagrin over the program’s record. The IR imager in
TSX-5’s STRV-2 payload was developed by DERA at Farnborough, but the
rest of STRV-2 was built in the US.
Table of Recent Launches
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Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.May 3 0707 GOES 11 Atlas 2A Canaveral SLC36A Weather 22A
May 3 1325 Kosmos-2370 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Imaging 23A
May 8 1601 DSP 20 Titan 4B Canaveral LC40 Early Warn 24A
May 11 0148 GPS SVN 51 Delta 7925 Canaveral SLC17A Navsat 25A
May 16 0828 Simsat-1 ) Rokot Plesetsk LC133 Test 26A
Simsat-2 ) 26B
May 19 1011 Atlantis Space Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 27A
May 24 2310 Eutelsat W4 Atlas 3A Canaveral SLC36B Comsat 28A
Jun 6 0259 Gorizont Proton/Briz-M Baykonur LC81P Comsat 29A
Jun 7 1319 TSX 5 Pegasus XL Vandenberg RW30/22 Science 30A
Jun 24 0028 Ekspress A No. 3 Proton/DM-2M Baykonur LC200? Comsat 31A
Jun 25 1150 Fengyun-2 CZ-3 Xichang LC1 Weather 32A
Jun 28 1037 Nadezhda ) Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC132 Navsat 33A
Tsinghua ) Tech 33B
SNAP 1 ) Tech 33C
Jun 30 1255 TDRS 8 Atlas 2A Canaveral SLC36 Comsat 34A
Jun 30 2208 Sirius 1 Proton/DM3 Baykonur LC81R Comsat 35A
Current Shuttle Processing Status
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Orbiters Location Mission Launch DueOV-102 Columbia Palmdale OMDP
OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 1 STS-92 2000 Oct ISS 3A
OV-104 Atlantis OPF Bay 3 STS-106 2000 Sep ISS 2A.2b
OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 2 STS-97 2000 Nov? ISS 4A
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| Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 |
| Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | |
| Astrophysics | |
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| Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@cfa.harvard.edu |
| USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu |
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