Jonathan’s Space Report No. 452 – 9 May 2001
Shuttle and Station
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Following the two STS-100 spacewalks, and the restarting of the Lab’s
command and control computers, the Shuttle RMS grappled the Spacelab
pallet at 2044 UTC on Apr 28. The SSRMS released it at 2106 UTC, and the
RMS berthed the pallet back in the Shuttle cargo bay. Endeavour undocked
from the Station at 1734 UTC on Apr 29. The weather in Florida was bad
at the planned May 1 landing time, so it was decided to bring Endeavour
back to California instead (to my chagrin, since I was touching down in
Orlando at the time!). The deorbit burn was at 1502 UTC on May 1, with
landing at 1610:42 UTC on runway 22 at Edwards. Endeavour returned to
KSC aboard one of the two Boeing 747 SCA aircraft on May 9.
The Lab’s serious computer problems and the resulting delay to SSRMS
operations raised the possibility that Soyuz TM-32 might arrive before
the Shuttle was ready to depart. This caused consternation at NASA,
where managers felt that a Soyuz approach to Zarya would come
dangerously close to the orbiter’s tail, and the resulting negotiations
with the Russian space agency widened the public rift between the senior
managements of the two agencies. However, in the event all was completed
in time and neither a delay in the Soyuz docking nor an emergency
Shuttle undocking was required.
Soyuz TM-32 docked with the -Z port on Zarya at 0758 UTC on Apr 30. The
2S crew of Musabaev, Baturin and tourist Dennis Tito transferred their
reentry couches to Soyuz TM-31, at which point TM-32 became the
Station’s rescue vehicle. The visiting crew remained on Alpha for almost
six days; they closed the hatches on Soyuz TM-31 late on May 5, leaving
Usachyov, Helms and Voss aboard the Station, and undocked from Zvezda’s
-Y port at 0221 UTC on May 6. The deorbit burn came at 0447 UTC,
followed by separation of the BO and PAO modules. The descent craft
touched down near Arkalyk in Kazakstan at 0541 UTC on May 6. The empty
port on Zvezda will be filled by a Progress cargo freighter at the end
of May.
Current mass of the Station is around 113900 kg including the docked
Soyuz TM-32.
In last week’s list of paying astronauts I missed out Greg Jarvis
of Hughes Aircraft, who like McAuliffe was launched on mission 51-L
but did not make it into space.
Recent Launches
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XM Satellite Radio’s second payload, XM-1 “Roll”, was launched by
Zenit-3SL from Sea Launch’s Odyssey Launch Platform at 154.0W 0.0N on
May 8. Roll joins Rock, launched on Mar 18, to complete the XM digital
satellite radio space segment.
The Zenit-3SL took off at 2210 UTC. The first two stages, comprising the
Yuzhnoe Zenit-2S core, placed the payload section on a 191 km apogee
suborbital trajectory at 2219 UTC; the Blok-DM’s adapter then separated
and the Energiya DM-SL stage’s LOX/kerosene 11D58M engine ignited for
its first burn, entering a 180 x 990 km x 1.3 deg parking orbit at 2223
UTC. The DM stage is derived from the original D stage which was part of
the L-3 piloted lunar spaceship of the abortive 1960s Soviet N-1/L-3
program. The second DM burn at 2258 UTC accelerated the stack to a 935 x
35797 km x 1.3 deg geostationary transfer orbit and the XM-1 Roll
satellite separated at 2315 UTC.
The XM-1 satellite is a Boeing Satellite Systems (El Segundo) BSS 702
with a launch mass of 4667 kg and a dry mass probably around 2500 kg. It
carries an R-4D liquid apogee engine and a XIPS ion stationkeeping
engine. The satellite’s Alcatel communications payload features an
X-band receive antenna which passes digital radio broadcasts on to the
two 5-meter S-band transmit antennas. The XM satellites, like the three
rival Sirius Radio satellites in inclined elliptical synchronous orbits,
will provide radio broadcasting to North America. XM-2 Rock is currently
on station at 114.9 deg W.
40 years ago: On 1961 May 5, Alan B. Shepard made a suborbital flight
aboard Mercury spacecraft no. 7 (Freedom Seven) on flight MR-3 launched
by Redstone MRLV-7 from Cape Canaveral.
30 years ago: In May 1971, the Mariner 8 and 9 and the 3M No. 170, 171
and 172 Mars probes were launched from Cape Kennedy and 5 NIIP/Baykonur.
3M No. 171 (Mars-2) became the first human artifact to reach the
Martian surface.
Table of Recent Launches
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Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.Mar 8 1142 Discovery (STS-102) Shuttle Kennedy LC39B Spaceship 10A
Leonardo Module
Mar 8 2251 Eurobird ) Ariane 5G Kourou ELA3 Ku video 11A
BSAT-2a ) Ku video 11B
Mar 18 2233 XM-2 Rock Zenit-3SL Odyssey,Pacific S-band radio 12A
Apr 7 0347 Ekran-M No. 18 Proton-M Baykonur LC81/24 UHF video 13A
Apr 7 1502 2001 Mars Odyssey Delta 7925 Canaveral SLC17A Mars probe 14A
Apr 18 1013 GSAT-1 GSLV Sriharikota S,C band vid 15A
Apr 19 1840 Endeavour ) Space Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 16A
Raffaello ) Module
Canadarm-2 )
Apr 28 0737 Soyuz TM-32 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Spaceship 17A
May 8 2210 XM-1 Roll Zenit-3SL Odyssey, Pacific S-band radio 18A
Current Shuttle Processing Status
_________________________________
Orbiters Location Mission Launch DueOV-102 Columbia VAB Bay 4 STS-109 2001 Nov 19 HST SM-3B
OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-105 2001 Jul 12 ISS 7A.1
OV-104 Atlantis OPF Bay 3 STS-104 2001 Jun 7 ISS 7A
OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-108 2001 Nov ISS UF-1
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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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