Jonathan’s Space Report No. 475 – 2002 Mar 28
Shuttle and Station
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A new robot cargo vessel, Progress M1-8, was launched on Mar 21. It is
Progress vehicle serial no. 257, and is flying ISS mission 7P. It docked
with the Zvezda module on the Station at 2058 UTC on Mar 24 and is now
being unloaded. I have confirmed that the Kolibri satellite deployed by
Progress M1-7 was indeed built by IKI/Moskva.
The next Shuttle launch is STS-110, which will carry the S0 truss
segment to the Station. The truss is the first segment of the main
backbone of the Station which will grow to carry the large solar panel
wings and radiators. This mission sees resumption of major construction
on the Station after several less spectacular resupply missions.
Jonathan’s cargo manifest estimate for STS-110/Atlantis:
Mass/kg
Bay 1-2 Orbiter Docking System 1800
3 EMU spacesuits 360?
Bay 4-13? S0 Truss 12623
Sill RMS arm 410
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Total 15193?
The S0 truss, built by Boeing/Huntington Beach, is 13.4m long and 4.6m
in diameter. The main truss has a hexagonal cross section. One face
carries fluid, power and data cables, while another face carries the
rails for the Mobile Transporter. The S0 contains avionics, GPS
antennas, and a radiation dose monitor. Attached to S0 are four MTS
(Module to Truss Structure) struts which will be used to connect it to
the Destiny module; the Airlock Spur, which is a 4.2m beam that hinges
out to connect to the Quest module and has handrails for spacewalkers;
and the Mobile Transporter (MT). The MT, made by TRW Astro Aerospace in
Carpinteria, is an 885 kg, 2.7m long truck which moves on the S0 rails
to transfer heavy cargo along the truss.
S0 will be attached to the LCA (Lab Cradle Assembly) which was
attached to the top of the Destiny lab module last year.
Crew of STS-110 are Mike Bloomfield and Stephen Frick (commander and
pilot), and mission specialists Rex Walheim, Ellen Ochoa, Lee Morin,
Jerry Ross and Steven Smith. Ross is due to become the first person to
make a seventh flight in space; John Young, Curt Brown, Story Musgrave,
and Franklin Chang-Diaz have also left Earth’s atmosphere 6 times.
Gennadiy Strekalov has also made 6 launches, but one of them was an
emergency abort that did not reach space.
Recent Launches
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China launched the third Shenzhou spaceship test flight on Mar 25.
Launch was at 2215 local time, which is 1415 UTC. The second stage of
the Chang Zheng 2F launch vehicle entered a 197 x 326 km x 42.4 deg
orbit at 1425 UTC and separated from Shenzhou. At about 2120 UTC
Shenzhou used its own engine to raise its orbit to 332 x 337 km.
Shenzhou has an orbital module, a reentry vehicle, and a
propulsion/service module, and its design is similar to the Russian
Soyuz. This flight of Shenzhou carries a dummy astronaut instrumented
to monitor life support systems.
The TDRS I satellite has run into a problem. Boeing Satellite Systems
reports that the BSS-601 satellite has a problem with the fuel supply
from one of its four propellant tanks; this will make it harder for TDRS
to reach geostationary orbit and could potentially reduce its on-orbit
life. The tanks are paired, so losing one tank cuts the propellant
supply in half.
TDRS I was launched on Mar 8 by Atlas IIA into a 247 x 29135 km x 27.1
deg orbit. It will be renamed TDRS 9 if it successfully reaches GEO and
is accepted by NASA. A test burn of the General Dynamics R-4D apogee
motor raised the orbit to 433 x 29146 km x 26.4 deg on Mar 11 and a
larger perigee burn raised the apogee to geostationary altitude, 429 x
35800 km, on Mar 13. Presumably the anomaly was uncovered at that point,
because no further burns were made until around 0h UTC on Mar 19,
raising the orbit to 3521 x 35789 km and lowering inclination to 21.4
deg. The previous TDRS launch made its comparable burn only 5 days after
launch to a higher perigee and lower inclination (6066 x 35971 km x 17
deg), so this time either the approach was more tentative or else the
burn was incomplete. A later burn at about 1840 UTC on Mar 25 raised the
orbit further to 8383 x 35811 km and lowered inclination to 17.4 deg.
Judging from the press release, it’s not a problem with the actual R-4D
thruster which has been very reliably used on everything from Lunar
Orbiter and Apollo through modern communications satellites, just with
the propellant supply system. Rumours of a possible Shuttle rescue for
TDRS I are unrealistic given that from its current orbit it needs twice
as much delta-V to get down to Shuttle as it needs to reach its actual
destination; indeed, orbit raising operations are continuing.
TDRS I probably had an initial fuel load of about 1660 kg (Boeing has
not released the dry mass of the satellite but it is probably about
1540 kg) of which about 140 kg is used for GEO stationkeeping and
maneuvers. The engine used is probably the R-4D-11-300 model with a
thrust of 490N and a specific impulse of about 315.5s. This implies it
has probably used about 450 kg of fuel already and needs about another
1000 kg to GEO; if the tanks were evenly loaded and one pair was
completely inaccessible there would only be 400 kg available and the
mission will be a loss; but if (as the optimistic tone of the press
release might suggest) it’s just a question of a reduced rate of access
to the fuel, they can replan with a less efficient set of burns and not
lose very much on-orbit life.
Table of Recent Launches
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Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.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 05A
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 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
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 Jun ISS UF-2
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| 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 |
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