Jonathan’s Space Report No. 476 2002 Apr 9

Shuttle and Station

Space Shuttle Atlantis was launched at 2044 UTC on Apr 8. It entered an
orbit of approximately 59 x 229 km x 51.6 deg at 2052 UTC, and separated
from the External Tank, ET-114. ET-114 reached apogee around 2122 UTC
and reentered over the Pacific about 2150 UTC at the end of its first
orbit. Atlantis fired its OMS engines at apogee to raise its perigee to
155 km. Further orbit changes will lead to a rendezvous with the Space
Station.

Atlantis (orbiter OV-104) is flying Shuttle mission STS-110, Station
mission 8A, which will deliver the S0 truss to Station. S0 will be
attached to the Destiny lab module.

Recent Launches

China’s Shenzhou 3 descent module returned to Earth on Apr 1 at 0851
UTC, landing in Nei Monggol Zizhiqu (Inner Mongolia). The orbital module
separated earlier on Apr 1 and remains in orbit carrying out
experiments; the propulsion module carried out the deorbit burn and then
separated to burn up in reentry.

An Arianespace Ariane 44L rocketed into space from Kourou on Mar 29,
launching JCSAT 8 and Astra 3A. The Ariane high energy third stage
reached geostationary transfer orbit. JCSAT 8 separated, followed by the
Mini-Spelda adapter, followed by Astra 3A. JCSAT 8 is a Boeing BSS-601
with a launch mass of 2600 kg and a dry mass around 1200 kg. It’s one of
the lowest mass BSS-601 satelites in recent years, and will be used by
Japan Satellite to replace JCSAT 2. Astra 3A is a Boeing BSS-376HP, a
smaller satellite wih a mass of 1495 kg full and about 750 kg empty. It
will join Luxembourg-based SES Astra’s fleet. The 376 model has been in
use since 1980 and only one other, also in the Astra series, has been
launched in the past three years.

International Launch Services carried out the launch of a Krunichev
Proton-K with an Energiya Blok DM3 upper stage on Mar 30 at 1725 UTC.
The three stage Proton put the DM3 and payload on a suborbital
trajectory. The first DM3 burn reached a circular 160 km orbit at 1742
UTC. The second burn at 1838 UTC raised apogee to about 35800 km, and a
third burn near apogee at 2339 UTC raised perigee to about 3500 km and
lowered inclination to 25 deg. Blok DM3 separated from the Intelsat 903
payload at 0008 UTC on Mar 31. By Apr 5, Intelsat 903 was in a 31653 x
35817 km x 0.7 deg near-synchronous orbit.

Intelsat 903 has a launch mass of 4726 kg and a dry mass around 2350 kg,
and carries C and Ku band antennas. It was built by SS/Loral using
a derivative of the FS-1300 platform.

Kosmos-2388 was launched on Apr 1 by Molniya-M from area 16, pad 2 at
Plesetsk (thanks to Alex Zheleznyakov for pad info). It is a US-KS (Oko)
elliptical orbit early warning satellite built by Lavochkin. The launch
was reported as successful, but GSFC had still not posted any Space
Command element sets by Apr 8 for the elliptical orbit (although the
Blok-I rocket and BOZ ullage system left in low orbit have now been
cataloged.) It’s very unusual for this kind of satellite not to be
tracked immediately, and it has probably gone into a non-standard orbit.
The usual initial orbit for Oko satellites is about 500 x 39000 km x
62.9 deg; the Blok-I is in a standard 231 x 490 km x 62.8 deg
low parking orbit.

Table of Recent Launches

Date UT       Name            Launch Vehicle  Site            Mission    INTL.

                                                                          DES.

Mar  1 0108   Envisat           Ariane 5G      Kourou ELA3      Rem.Sensing  09A

Mar  1 1122   Columbia STS-109  Space Shuttle  Kennedy LC39A    Spaceship    10A

Mar  8 2259   TDRS I            Atlas 2A       Canaveral SLC36A Data relay   11A

Mar 17 0921   GRACE 1 )         Rokot          Plesetsk LC133   Science      12A

              GRACE 2 )                                                      12B

Mar 19 2228   Kolibri           –              Progress, LEO    Education  01-51C

Mar 21 2013   Progress M1-8     Soyuz-FG       Baykonur LC1     Cargo        13A

Mar 25 1415   Shenzhou 3  )     CZ-2F          Jiuquan          Spaceship    14A

              SZ-3 module )                                                  14C

Mar 29 0129   Astra 3A)         Ariane 44L     Kourou ELA3      Comms        15A

              JCSAT 8 )                                         Comms        15B

Mar 30 1725   Intelsat 903      Proton-K/DM3   Baykonur LC81/23 Comms        16A

Apr  1 2207   Kosmos-2388       Molniya-M      Plesetsk LC16/2  Early Warn   17A

Apr  8 2019   Atlantis STS-110) Space Shuttle  Kennedy LC39B    Spaceship    18A

              S0              )                                 Station piece

Current Shuttle Processing Status

Orbiters               Location   Mission    Launch Due

OV-102 Columbia        OPF           STS-107 2002 Jul 11  Spacehab

OV-103 Discovery       OPF           Maintenance

OV-104 Atlantis        LEO           STS-110 2002 Apr  8  ISS 8A

OV-105 Endeavour       OPF Bay 1?    STS-111 2002 Jun     ISS UF-2

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

|  Harvard-Smithsonian Center for    |                                    |

|   Astrophysics                     |                                    |

|  60 Garden St, MS6                 |                                    |

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