Jonathan’s Space Report No. 487
Shuttle and Station
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The Expedition 5 crew remain aboard the Station. The next mission to
Station is the STS-112 flight in early October.
Four more pieces of debris (27521-27524) have recently been cataloged in
low orbit, associated with the station but 200 km below it. They are
probably associated with the spacewalks in August and have already lost
altitude due to friction with the atmosphere.
The STS-112 mission will deliver the S1 (Starboard 1) truss to the Station,
and attach it to the end of S0. S1 mostly consists of a thermal
control system, with big ammonia cooling loops and three large radiator
panels each 3.3m x 22.9m. The three panels are attached to a single
base structure which can rotate relative to the truss to orient the
radiators. On the other side of the truss is the CETA cart,
which will be used to ferry equipment along the mobile transporter
railway. S1 was built by Boeing/Huntingdon Beach and Boeing/Huntsville.
CETA may also be built at Huntingdon Beach but I’m not sure.
Jonathan's Cargo Bay Manifest estimate for STS-112:Mass/kg Bay 1-2 Orbiter Docking System 1800 2 EMU spacesuits? 240? Bay 3-13 S1 Integrated Truss Segment 12572 CETA Cart A 283 Sill RMS 410 --------------------------------------------------------------- Total 15305?
Recent Launches
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Japan’s H-2A rocket successfully launched the DRTS and USERS satellites
at 0820 UTC on Sep 10. USERS is in a 440 x 455 km x 30.4 deg orbit. As
of Sep 11, DRTS (renamed Kodama) was in a 7414 x 36013 km x 12.0 deg
transfer orbit, presumably following a first apogee engine firing. A
later engine firing failed.
H-2A-F3 is the H-2A 2024 variant, with 2 large strapons and 2 small
strapons, and a 4-meter fairing of the 4/4D-LC type. After launch from
Tanegashima the first stage burned for 6 minutes and separated prior to
the second stage first burn, which concluded at 0832 UTC in a 450 km
circular orbit. The USERS satellite separated at 0833 UTC. USERS is the
Unmanned Space Experiment Recovery System, developed and operated by the
USEF consortium for the Ministry of Trade and Industry. It carries
microgravity and technology experiments and consists of a service module
(SEM), made by Mitsubishi, and a reentry vehicle (REV) and propulsion
module (PM), made by Nissan. The PM/REV will separate from the SM after
eight months in space. The PM fires to put the PM/REV in a -110 x 450 km
orbit over the Indian Ocean; the PM will separate at 120 km altitude and
be destroyed on reentry while the REV is recovered at 151E 22N in the
Pacific near Japan’s Ogasawara Islands. I don’t have any details on the
PM deorbit motor – please pass them on if you know anything (mass, size,
thrust, burn time, manufacturer – probably Nissan). The SEM has a mass
of 800 kg; the REV/PM has a total mass of 926 kg, but I don’t know the
separate masses of REV, PM and PM motor.
At 0836 UTC the USERS payload attach adapter was jettisoned, and the two
semi-cylindrical halves of the fairing below it were also separated,
revealing the DRTS payload inside still attached to the second stage.
The second stage reignited at 0846 UTC and burned for 2.5 minutes,
entering geostationary transfer orbit. The DRTS satellite then
separated. DRTS/Kodama is a Japanese analog to the TDRS satellites, and
will be used for data relay and intersatellite communications. It is
built by Mitsubishi for the Japanese NASDA space agency and has a mass
of 1300 kg (dry), plus a further 1500 kg of propellant at launch for its
propulsion system. The apogee engine is a 500N thruster and is a
downrated version of the 1700N LAPS-derived engine used in the earlier
COMETS satellite. The engine appears to have failed after a couple of
burns. DRTS has a 3.6-meter Ka-band dish.
India has launched a weather satellite, METSAT, in the first use of the
PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) to a geostationary transfer
trajectory. METSAT is about 1000 kg at launch; ISRO has not
released any information on the size of the satellite.
The launch was from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at the Sriharikota
Range (SHAR). PSLV-C4 has an uprated fourth stage; the third
stage was apparently suborbital with a Pacific Ocean impact, and
the fourth stage reached GTO without a parking orbit (this is subject
to confirmation, as ISRO’s press info didn’t include details of
the trajectory). Apogee of the PS4 stage is 34500 km; the remaining
distance to geostationary orbit was made up by METSAT’s on-board fuel.
Rumour has it that China carried out the first launch of the three-stage
solid-fuelled KT-1 (Kaituozhe-1) rocket on Sep 15. KT-1 is apparently
based on the DF-31 ballistic missile. The test launch carried a 50 kg
satellite and was trying to reach a 300 km polar orbit, but apparently
the launch was a failure. Since I haven’t managed to confirm the rumour,
I’m not including this launch in my launch list.
An object has been detected in deep Earth orbit which is probably a
recaptured Apollo Saturn IVB stage. It was captured from solar orbit
near the L1 point in April 2002, flew 161000 km from the Moon around Jun
15, and is now in an orbit of about 288000 x 825100 km x 21.0 deg. Until
its nature is confirmed, the object has been given the provisional
designation J002E3.
Webb Space Telescope
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NASA has selected TRW to build the Next Generation Space Telescope, now
renamed the James Webb Space Telescope. The announcement of this major
contract, worth $824 million, had been expected for several months,
with TRW and Lockheed Martin competing for the mission. Lockheed was
prime for the Hubble Space Telescope, while TRW built Chandra. Earlier
in the summer, NASA did select a team led by Arizona’s George Rieke to
built the observatory’s main infrared camera. Scheduled launch of the
6-meter telescope has now slipped to 2010.
The naming of the telescope after James Edwin Webb (1906-1992), a NASA
manager who led the agency as its second Administrator from 1961 to
1968, has surprised many astronomers used to the tradition of naming
such observatories after scientists, usually in consultation with the
users of the satellite (e.g. the Einstein, Hubble, Chandra, and Compton
satellites). This is the first spacecraft to honor a bureaucrat; Webb
ran NASA during the preparation for the Apollo moon landings and the
early years of the space science program, and although unknown to most
astronomers (based on an unscientific poll of my colleagues) is
remembered with respect by many spaceflight enthusiasts because of his
association with Apollo. Previously, he was a congressional staffer, an
executive at Sperry Gyroscope, the director of the Bureau of the Budget,
an Undersecretary of State under Harry Truman, and then an oil company
executive. According to space policy expert Dwayne Day, Webb did protect
a broad-based NASA science program during a time when there was a lot of
pressure, from President Kennedy on down, to put all of the money into
Apollo and cancel everything else; I gather he is rumoured to be a hero
of current NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe. It will be interesting to
see if this naming starts a trend; an educational/outreach competition
to name the SIRTF spacecraft was held recently, but no winner has been
announced.
Table of Recent Launches
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Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Aug 21 2205 Hot Bird 6 Atlas V 401 Canaveral SLC41 Comms 38A
Aug 22 0515 Echostar VIII Proton-K/DM3 Baykonur LC81/23 Comms 39A
Aug 28 2245 Atlantic Bird 1 ) Ariane 5G Kourou ELA3 Comms 40A
MSG 1 ) Weather 40B
Sep 6 0644 Intelsat 906 Ariane 44L Kourou ELA2 Comms 41A
Sep 10 0820 Kodama) H2A 2024 Tanegashima Comms 42B
USERS) Micrograv 42A
Sep 12 1025 METSAT PSLV Sriharikota Weather 43A
Current Shuttle Processing Status
_________________________________
Orbiters Location Mission Launch DueOV-102 Columbia OPF STS-107 2003 Jan 16 Spacehab OV-103 Discovery VAB Maintenance OV-104 Atlantis LC39B STS-112 2002 Oct 2 ISS 9A OV-105 Endeavour OPF STS-113 2002 Nov ISS 11A
.-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | |
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