Jonathan’s Space Report No. 445 29 Jan 2001

Shuttle and Stations

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Atlantis rolled out to the pad on Jan 26 after further wiring
checks. Launch is now scheduled for Feb 7.
Revised estimate for the STS-98 cargo bay: (still looking
for a payload bay diagram)

                                               Est. Mass (kg)

Bay 1-2:     Orbiter Docking System                     1800

             and External Airlock

             3 EMU spacesuits (S/N unknown)              360?

Bay 4-13:    Destiny Module                            14056

Unknown      Adapter Beam with                            78?

             PDGF (Power Data Grapple Fixture)

Unknown      Adapter Beam with                           100?

             SASA (S-band Antenna Support Assembly)

Sill:        Canadarm RMS 202                            410

                                                      ——

                      Total payload bay cargo          16804 kg

Expedition One crew Bill Shepherd, Yuriy Gidzenko and Sergey Krikalyov
remain on the ISS, awaiting the launch of STS-98. They will be
relieved by the Expedition Two crew which will fly on STS-102
in March.

The Mir station had a power failure on Jan 18, delaying the launch of
the Progress cargo ship that was to deorbit it for a few days. Progress
No. 254, post launch name Progress M1-5, was launched on Jan 24.
According to a report by Anatoliy Zak, the Progress carries 2677 kg of
fuel. Total launch mass is probably around 7300 kg. A special 3-day
fuel-economy approach was be used to keep as much fuel as possibile for
the deorbit, scheduled for Mar 6. Progress M1-5 docked with the +X Kvant
port at 0533 UTC on Jan 27. Progress M-43 undocked at 0519 UTC on Jan 25
from the same port and on Jan 29 was in a 271 x 280 km x 51.6 deg orbit.
On Jan 29, Mir was in a 90.41 min, 284 x 305 km x 51.6 deg orbit.
Since Jan 5, when it dipped below its Jan 2000 orbit, it has been lower
in average height than at any time since orbit insertion in 1986.
In mid-January its perigee dipped below the Nov 1987 record of 286 km.

Current Launches

—————-

The Shenzhou spacecraft reportedly carried a monkey, a dog and a rabbit.

On Jan 27, Turksat 2A was in a 35768 x 35804 km x 0.1 deg, 1436.10 min
geostationary orbit at 41.9 deg E. It entered the geosynchronous region
with a burn on Jan 15 around 0800 UTC which raised the period from
1078.3 to 1428.4 min.

Errata

——-

Stardust’s closest appoach distance was 6012 km, not 3706 km as I reported
in JSR 444. My mind just can’t seem to get around the fact that some people
still use imperial units 🙂

I reported the Japan’s LDREX experiment as a failure. J-M. Desobeau
correctly pointed out to me that although the LDREX antenna failed to
deploy, strictly as an experiment LDREX was a success, although it
must have been a very disappointing one for NASDA. The experiment
was designed to determine whether the deployment mechanism (planned for
the ETS-8 satellite) worked, and it indeed returned lots of information
on that subject, which hopefully will lead to a successful ETS-8 mission
in the future. (If the video camera or telemetry hadn’t functioned, LDREX
would have been a failure, but problems with the antenna deployment were
what LDREX was designed to measure and don’t per se make it a failure).

Table of Recent Launches

———————–

Date UT       Name            Launch Vehicle  Site            Mission    INTL.

                                                                          DES.

Dec  1 0306   Endeavour)        Space Shuttle  Kennedy LC39     Spaceship  78A

              ITS P6   )                                       Station seg.

Dec  5 1232   EROS A1           Start-1        Svobodniy        Imaging    79A

Dec  6 0247   USA 155           Atlas 2AS      Canaveral SLC36A Commsat?   80A

Dec 20 0026   Astra 2D )        Ariane 5G      Kourou ELA3      Commsat    81A

              GE 8     )                                        Commsat    81B

              LDREX    )                                        Tech       81C

Dec 20 1620   Beidou            CZ-3A          Xichang LC2      Navsat     82A

Dec 27 1856   Gonets D-1 )      Tsiklon-3      Plesetsk LC32    Commsat    F03

              Gonets D-1 )

              Gonets D-1 )

              Strela-3   )

              Strela-3   )

              Strela-3   )

Jan  9 1700   Shenzhou 2        Chang Zheng 2F Jiuquan          Spaceship  01A

Jan 10 2209   Turksat 2A        Ariane 44P     Kourou ELA2      Commsat    02A

Jan 24 0428   Progress M1-5     Soyuz-U        Baykonur LC1     Cargo      03A

Current Shuttle Processing Status

_________________________________

Orbiters               Location   Mission    Launch Due   

OV-102 Columbia        Palmdale      OMDP

OV-103 Discovery       OPF Bay 1     STS-102 2001 Mar  8  ISS 5A.1

OV-104 Atlantis        LC39A         STS-98  2001 Feb  7  ISS 5A

OV-105 Endeavour       OPF Bay 2     STS-100 2001 Apr 19  ISS 6A

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|  Jonathan McDowell                 |  phone : (617) 495-7176            |

|  Harvard-Smithsonian Center for    |                                    |

|   Astrophysics                     |                                    |

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