Jonathan’s Space Report No. 474 2002 Mar 21
Shuttle and Station
——————–
STS-109 carried out a successful set of upgrades to the Hubble
Space Telescope; Progress M1-7 undocked from the Station;
Progress M1-8 is ready for launch.
STS-109 was launched at 1122:02 UTC on Mar 1. Main engine cutoff came at
1130 UTC with Columbia in a 55 x 574 km x 28.5 deg transfer orbit. The
OMS-2 burn at about 1207 UTC raised perigee to about 195 km. There was a
problem with a freon cooling loop on the Orbiter, but it wasn’t quite
bad enough to affect the mission.
The Hubble Space Telescope closed its aperture door on Mar 2 in
preparation for the rendezvous. Columbia got within 100m of HST by 0852
UTC on Mar 3 and grappled it with the RMS at 0931 UTC. HST was berthed
on the FSS in Columbia’s payload bay by 1032 UTC.
The astronauts carried out five spacewalks to refurbish HST. On EVA-1
the airlock was depressurized at 0630 on Mar 4 and repressurized at
1338 UTC. Grunsfeld and Linnehan replaced the -V2 solar array with the
new rigid array stored in the RAC carrier, and replaced a solar array
diode box. On EVA-2, depress was at 0634 on Mar 5 and repress was at
1356 UTC; Newman and Massimino replaced the +V2 solar array and diode
box, and replaced the RWA-1 reaction wheel assembly. On EVA-3, depress
was at 0825 UTC on Mar 6 and repress at 1516 UTC; the HST was powered
entirely down and Grunsfeld and Linnehan changed out the power control
unit. On EVA-4, by Newman and Massimino, depress was at 0856 UTC on Mar
7 and repress was at 1630 UTC. The Faint Object Camera was removed and
the Advanced Camera for Surveys was installed. The CASH (Cross Aft
Shroud Harness) wire harness for the cooling system was installed. EVA-5
ran from 0841 to 1606 UTC on Mar 8, and saw installation of the NICMOS
cooling system (NCS) by Grunsfled and Linnehan. During preparations for
EVA-3, a problem with a valve on Grunsfeld’s suit caused it to leak
water, and Grunsfeld switched to Newman’s suit. For each of EVA-3,4,5
the appropriate size legs and arms were replaced on the same basic HUT
(Hard Upper Torso)/PLSS (Primary Life Support System) combination.
HST was deployed from Columbia at 1004 UTC on Mar 9 into a 578 x 584 km
x 28.5 deg orbit. Columbia landed on Mar 12 at KSC; deorbit was at 0822
UTC with landing on runway 33 at 0931 UTC.
On the Space Station, the Expedition 4 crew finished loading the
Progress 256 (Progress M1-7) craft, and it undocked from Zvezda’s aft
port at 1743 UTC on Mar 19. The Kolibri-2000 microsatellite was ejected
from the Progress cargo compartment at 2228 UTC; Progress fired
its engines to deorbit over the Pacific at about 0127 UTC on Mar 20.
Kolibri is a joint Russian-Australian educational project to allow
school children to monitor low frequency waves and particle
fluxes in low orbit. The IKI space science group leads the
project together with Energiya, NPO-M and Polyot, although
it’s not clear to me who actually built the satellite. It has
a mass of 21 kg and has a 2-meter gravity gradient boom and
four solar panels. The satellite is in a 385 x 388 km x 51.6 deg orbit.
Recent Launches
—————
According to Arianespace, Ariane 511 put Envisat directly in its target
orbit (within 20 metres) and no orbit adjust maneuvers are required. The
EPC stage was on a -2610 x 651 km x 93.8 deg orbit, reaching apogee
around 0125 UTC and reentering north of Ellesmere Island at about 0136
UTC. Envisat is in a 766 x 784 km x 98.5 deg orbit.
A Lockheed Martin Atlas IIA, AC-143, was launched from Cape Canaveral on
Mar 8. It orbited NASA’s TDRS-I (TDRS-9) data relay satellite. The
Centaur entered a 167 x 578 km parking orbit and then a subsynchronous
transfer orbit. TDRS-I is a Boeing BSS-601 satellite supporting S, Ku
and Ka band communications.
The Iridium satellites launched in February were vehicles 90,91,94,95, and 96.
SV 92 and 93 were launched in Jun 1999 to replace SV 14 and 20.
Two scientific satellites, GRACE 1 and 2, were launched on Mar 17 from
Plesetsk by a Rokot vehicle. The Krunichev Rokot is a two-stage UR-100N
ballistic missile with a Briz-KM third stage. The Briz stage ignited 5
min after launch and after a ten minute burn reached a 300 x 500 km
orbit at about 0936 UTC. A second burn at 1042 UTC placed the satellites
in a 483 x 506 km x 89 deg orbit; the two satellites separated from the
dispenser at 1047 UTC. A third Briz burn then lowered the rocket stage
orbit to 146 x 487 km x 89 deg so that it will reenter quickly.
Pedantic note: I would like to join other astropedants, notably Phillip
Clark, in deploring the new-fangled use of the word `deorbit’ for this
kind of perigee lowering burn which does not immediately place the
vehicle on a suborbital trajectory. Until fairly recently, `deorbit’
always meant to immediately remove from orbit, although GEO satellite
operators have used it to mean `move a little way out of the
geostationary corridor’ for about a decade now. How about `orbit safing’
or `infraorbiting’? The watering down of the meaning of `deorbit’ leaves
me without a word that means specifically `actively maneuver onto a
trajectory whose perigee is within the atmosphere’, the sense in which
`deorbit burn’ is used in the Shuttle program, and which contrasts
with both `reenter’ (which includes passive decay due to atmospheric drag)
and with `orbit maneuver’ (which includes orbit changes that result
in a continuing orbit).
The GRACE satellites, built by Astrium/Friedrichshafen using the FlexBus
platform first used for the CHAMP satellite, will measure local spatial
and temporal variations in the Earth gravity field using GPS and a
microwave intersatellite link. The project is a joint effort of NASA and
the German DLR space agency and the science leads are the University of
Texas at Austin and the GFZ in Potsdam. The GRACE satellites are so
sensitive, they can measure changes in gravity due to the redistribution
of water in the ocean and atmosphere as a function of time.
Table of Recent Launches
———————–
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Jan 16 0030 Milstar FLT-5 Titan Centaur Canaveral SLC40 Comms 01A
Jan 23 2347 Insat 3C Ariane 42L Kourou ELA2 Comms 02A
Feb 4 0245 MDS-1 ) H-2A Tanegashima Tech 03A
DASH ) Tech 03
VEP-3 ) Tech 03
Feb 5 2058 HESSI Pegasus XL Canaveral Astronomy 04A
Feb 11 1743 Iridium 90) Delta 7920 Vandenberg SLC2W Comms 05AatioA Iridium 91) 05B
Iridium 94) 05C
Iridium 95) 05D
Iridium 96) 05E
Feb 21 1243 Echostar 7 Atlas 3B Canaveral SLC36B Comms 06A
Feb 23 0659 Intelsat 904 Ariane 44L Kourou ELA2 Comms 07A
Feb 25 1726 Kosmos-2387 Soyuz-U Plesetsk LC43/3 Imaging 08A
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 9 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
Current Shuttle Processing Status
_________________________________
Orbiters Location Mission Launch DueOV-102 Columbia OPF STS-107 2002 Jul 11 Spacehab
OV-103 Discovery OPF Maintenance
OV-104 Atlantis LC39B STS-110 2002 Apr 4 ISS 8A
OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1? STS-111 2002 May 2 ISS UF-2
.————————————————————————-.
| 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 |
‘————————————————————————-‘
