Jonathan’s Space Report No. 459 2001 Aug 26

Shuttle and Station

——————–

STS-105 was launched on Aug 10 at 2110 UTC. MECO (main engine cutoff)
was at 2218 UTC with separation of external tank ET-110 into a 58 x 234
km x 51.6 deg orbit. At 2248 UTC Discovery reached apogee and fired its
OMS engines to enter a 155 x 233 km x 51.6 deg orbit; another burn at
around 0100 UTC raised the orbit to 198 x 277 km. Meanwhile the External
Tank fell back towards the Pacific and reentered at its first perigee at
around 2340 UTC.

Discovery docked at the Station’s PMA-2 port at 1842 UTC on Aug 12.
After some problems aligning the docking system, the docking
ring was retracted and latched at 1905 UTC and the hatch was opened
to ISS at 2042 UTC.

Expedition 3 began on Aug 13 at 1915 UTC when the new crew’s seat liners
were installed on the Soyuz transport ship. The formal EX-2/EX-3
change-of-command ceremony was held on Aug 17 in Destiny.

Barry (EV1) and Forrester (EV2) made two spacewalks from the external
airlock on Discovery. EVA-1, on Aug 16, transferred the Early Ammonia
Servicer (EAS) device from the ICC carrier in the payload bay to the P6
truss on the station. Then the astronauts took two MISSE materials
exposure experiment boxes from the ICC and attached them to the outside
of the Quest airlock. The airlock was depressurized at about 1356 UTC
and the duration was 6h18m (depress/repress), 6h10m (hatch open/close), or
6h16m (NASA rule).

The second spacewalk on Aug 18 installed Orbit-Installed Handrails and
Launch-to-Activation Heater Cables on Destiny. The cables are needed for
the installation of the S0 truss to be launched in early 2002. The
airlock was depressurized at about 1339 UTC and spacewalk duration was
5h31m (depress/repress), 5h24m (hatch open/close), or 5h29m (NASA rule).

The Leonardo MPLM module was lifted out of Discovery’s payload bay at 1326
UTC on Aug 13 and docked to Unity’s nadir at 1554 UTC. 3300 kg of cargo
from it was loaded on to the Station and 1700 kg of cargo was returned
to it; it was unberthed from Unity at 1816 UTC on Aug 19 and berthed
back in the payload bay for the return to Earth at 1917 UTC the same
day. Discovery undocked at 1452 UTC on Aug 20 with the Expedition 2
crew aboard, leaving Expedition 3 on the Station.

At 1830 UTC on Aug 20 the Simplesat satellite was ejected from a GAS
canister in the cargo bay. Simplesat has a 0.3m optical telescope and a
GPS attitude control system. It is intended to test methods for building
cheap astronomical satellites and controlling them from a cheap ground
station. As of Aug 25 the ground station was still having teething
problems.

Discovery landed at Kennedy Space Center at 1822:58 UTC on Aug 22.
Landing was on runway 15, after a deorbit burn at 1715 UTC. The
Expedition Two crew of Usachyov, Voss and Helms had been in space for
167 days.

Discovery will now have some downtime for structural inspections. Its
last maintenance down period was in 1995-1996. Atlantis is being stored
in the VAB for a while since only three Orbiter parking spots are
available in the Orbiter Processing Facility. The VAB has been empty of
Shuttle stacks for a while during refurbishments, and the stack for
STS-108 will start being built up this week on Mobile Launch Platform 1
in VAB High Bay 1; External Tank ET-111 is hanging in High Bay 2 and
Endeavour will roll to the VAB sometime in late October.

Recent Launches

—————

A classified Russian satellite was launched on Aug 24 by Proton-K from
Baykonur. Launch time was 2034 UTC (although one wire report implied
2045 UTC, but that is less consistent with the orbital data). A Blok DM
class upper stage put the payload, code-named Kosmos-2379, in
geostationary transfer orbit after its first burn at 2152 UTC. A second
burn was expected at 0310 UTC to put the payload in GEO. The payload is
probably a Prognoz-class early warning satellite built by NPO Lavochkin,
the Russian equivalent of the DSP satellites.

Editorial: US – and others – Not Compliant With UN Resolution 1721B

——————————————————————-

In JSR 453 I criticized the US Government for its spotty compliance
with the 1975 Convention on Registration of Outer Space Objects, which
grew out of UN Resolution 1721B. This is not a new issue, Jim Oberg drew
attention to it years before I did, but it’s worth re-airing the facts
in this time when strategic treaty regimes are under reconsideration.
However, the story is now being repeated by other news outlets,
sometimes in stronger terms than I would use. I have therefore put
together a more detailed statement at

http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/un/untxt.html

to clarify what I’m saying. My intent is to draw attention to
the importance of openness in the military use of space and to call on
all countries, not just the US, to be more careful about complying with
their obligations under UN Resolution 1721 and the 1975 Convention.

In the context of controversial developments in the military use of
space, it is perhaps worth mentioning that JSR is intended as a
non-partisan source of technical information, and if you spot my own
admittedly strong views creeping in to the newsletter you are encouraged
to give me a hard time about it.

Table of Recent Launches

———————–

Date UT       Name            Launch Vehicle  Site            Mission    INTL.

                                                                          DES.

Jul 12 0904   Atlantis STS-104) Shuttle        Kennedy LC39B    Spaceship    28A

              Quest           )                                 Station module

Jul 12 2158   Artemis   )       Ariane 5G      Kourou ELA3      Expt. comms  29A

              BSAT-2b   )                                       Ku video     29B

Jul 20 0017   Molniya-3         Molniya-M      Plesetsk LC43/4  Comms        30A

Jul 23 0723   GOES 12           Atlas IIA      Canaveral SLC36A Weather      31A

Jul 31 0800   Koronas-F         Tsiklon-3      Plesetsk LC32    Astronomy    32A

Aug  6 0728   DSP 21            Titan 4B/IUS   Canaveral SLC40  Early Warn   33A

Aug  8 1613   Genesis           Delta 7326     Canaveral SLC17A Space probe  34A

Aug 10 2110   Discovery  )      Shuttle        Kennedy LC39     Spaceship    35A

              Leonardo   )

Aug 20 1830   Simplesat         –              Discovery, LEO   Astronomy    35B

Aug 21 0924   Progress M-45     Soyuz-U        Baykonur LC1     Cargo        36A

Aug 24 2034   Kosmos-2379       Proton-K/DM2M? Baykonur LC200?  Early Warn?  37A

Orbiters               Location   Mission    Launch Due

OV-102 Columbia        OPF Bay 3     STS-109 2002 Jan 17  HST SM-3B

OV-103 Discovery       OPF Bay 2     Maintenance

OV-104 Atlantis        VAB           STS-110 2002 Feb 28  ISS 8A

OV-105 Endeavour       OPF Bay 1     STS-108 2001 Nov 29  ISS UF-1

.————————————————————————-.

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

|  Harvard-Smithsonian Center for    |                                    |

|   Astrophysics                     |                                    |

|  60 Garden St, MS6                 |                                    |

|  Cambridge MA 02138                |  inter : jcm@cfa.harvard.edu       |

|  USA                               |          jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu |

|                                                                         |

| JSR: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/jsr.html                 |

| Back issues:  http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/back            |

| Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@head-cfa.harvard.edu, (un)subscribe jsr |

‘————————————————————————-‘