Jonathan’s Space Report No. 511 2003 Oct 9
Travel
——
All the most interesting events in space happen while I’m away on
travel. In the next 10 days we expect the launch of the first Chinese
astronaut aboard Shenzhou-5 and the launch of Soyuz TMA-3 with the
Expedition 8 crew. However, I will have only intermittent access to the
net while I am in Strasbourg and Darmstadt, and the JSR website will
probably not be updated; expect full reports in late October.
Shuttle and Station
——————–
Progress M1-10 has been deorbited. It undocked from the Station on Sep 4
and has spent a month on an Earth Observation mission. The deorbit
engine ignited at 1126 UTC on Oct 3 from a 247 x 340 km x 51.6 deg
orbit, reducing it to approximately 69 x 253 km. Progress M1-10
reentered the atmosphere over the Pacific at 1158 UTC and broke up
around 1205 UTC.
NASA is now scheduling the STS-114 return-to-flight mission for 2004 Sep
12, with the STS-121 followon mission on 2004 Nov 15. This schedule
is likely to change further.
Recent Launches
—————
Panamsat’s Galaxy 13/Horizons-1 satellite was launched on Oct 1 by a
Boeing Sea Launch Zenit-3SL rocket from the floating Odyssey platform at
154W 0N in the Pacific. The satellite carries both C-band and Ku-band
communications payloads. The C-band payload is referred to as Galaxy 13;
the Ku-band payload is jointly owned by Panamsat and the Japanese JSAT
company and is called Horizons-1; this latter will help carry digital
data services between the Americas and Asia via a relay station in
Hawaii. The satellite is a Boeing 601HP model.
The Yuzhnoe Zenit-3SL second stage separated in a -1917 x 185 km x 0 deg
suborbital path 8 min after launch and fell back to the Pacific. The
Energiya Blok DM-SL upper stage reached an initial 180 x 8353 km x 0
deg parking orbit 16 min after launch, then restarted and separated from
the payload 1 hour after launch in a 2396 x 35751 km x 0.04 deg
geostationary transfer orbit. Launch mass was 4090 kg.
As of Oct 8, most of the Ariane 516 payloads were still recorded in their
initial orbits by Space Command, although Insat 3E is known to have made
several orbit raising burns and is now in a geostationary drift
orbit. The e-Bird satellite fired its apogee motor at about 1025 UTC
on Sep 30.
75 debris objects, SSN 27964-28038, have been cataloged from the
explosion of a small Proton SOZ ullage rocket in orbit. Each Energiya
Blok DM class upper stage uses two small liquid motors to accelerate the
stage and push propellant to the back of the tanks before starting the
main engine for the DM’s second burn. In most variants of the stage,
these ullage rockets, called SOZ (sistema obespecheniya zapuska), are
ejected as soon as the main engine reaches full thrust and remain in the
transfer orbit. Over the years materials in the SOZ can degrade and
allow leftover fuel and oxidizer to mix, causing an explosion. In this
particular case, Proton 349-02 was launched from Baykonur on 1988 Sep 16
at 0200 UTC and placed a payload section in orbit consisting of the
upper stage, Blok DM2 11S861 No. 43L, and three Uragan navigation
satelites, Nos. 42L, 43L and 44L, given the cover names Kosmos-1970,
1971 and 1972 after launch. The DM2 fired to enter an eccentric orbit
with an apogee of 19100 km and then at apogee the SOZ units fired,
separated into a 413 x 19112 km x 64.9 deg orbit, and the DM2 fired to
circularize the orbit and release the Uragans. The two SOZ units were
cataloged as 19535/1988-85F and 19537/1988-85G. Since the demise of
NASA’s quarterly orbital debris report, there’s no source that
identifies the origin of orbital debris – hopefully some reader with
good orbit propagation software can figure out which of the two objects
was the source of the explosion. The debris objects are in orbits of
400-760 x 18100-18850 km x 65.2-65.7 deg; In September SOZ-1 1988-85F
was in a 717 x 18510 km x 65.3 deg orbit, and SOZ-2 1988-85G was in a
713 x 18327 km x 65.2 deg orbit. SOZ-1 hasn’t had any new orbital data
since Aug 23, so it seems a reasonable guess that it is the one that
exploded. The explosion occurred between mid August and Sep 9.
Table of Recent Launches
———————–
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Sep 9 0429 USA 171 Titan 4B/Centaur Canaveral SLC40 Sigint 41A
Sep 16 PS2 KT-1 Taiyuan Test F01
Sep 27 0612 STSat-1 ) Astronomy 42A
UK-DMC ) Imaging 42
NigeriaSat-1 ) Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC132 Imaging 42
BILSAT-1 ) Imaging 42
Mozhaets-4 ) Comms? 42
Larets ) Calib? 42
Rubin-4-DSI ) Test 42
Sep 27 2314 Insat 3E ) Ariane 5G Kourou ELA3 Comms 43E
e-Bird ) Comms 43B
SMART-1 ) Lunar 43
Oct 1 0403 Galaxy 13 Zenit-3SL SL Odyssey Comms 44A
.-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | 1 Fitchburg St C-205 | | | Somerville MA 02143 | | | and | | | Center for Astrophysics, | | | 60 Garden St, MS6 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@host.planet4589.org | | USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://www.planet4589.org/jsr.html | | Back issues: http://www.planet4589.org/space/jsr/back
