Jonathan’s Space Report No. 489 2002 Oct 31
Shuttle and Station
——————–
Space Shuttle mission STS-112 was launched on Oct 7. Atlantis took off
from Kennedy Space Center to a 58 x 227 km x 51.6 deg orbit. The OMS-2
burn at 2028 UTC raised the perigee to 158 km. Atlantis docked with the
Station on Oct 9 at 1517 UTC, with hatch opening at 1650 UTC.
On Oct 10 the Station SSRMS grappled the S1 truss in Atlantis’ payload
bay, unberthing it at 1047 UTC and connecting it to the end of the S0
truss at 1336 UTC. Dave Wolf and Piers Sellers made a spacewalk from the
Quest module, with depressurization at 1514 UTC and hatch open around
1518 UTC. They connected fluid lines and installed equpment on the S1.
The hatch was closed at about 2218 UTC with repressurization at 2222 UTC
for a duration of 7h08m (7h01m by NASA rules). A second spacewalk on Oct
12 began with depressurization at 1425 UTC, with hatch opening 4 min
later; the hatch was closed at 2030 UTC with repressurization at 2035
UTC for a duration of 6h10m (6h4m by NASA rules). Wolf and Sellers made
their third spacewalk on Oct 14, with depressurization at about 1404 UTC
and hatch open at about 1408 UTC (I don’t have full data on this EVA).
They carried out repairs to the Mobile Transporter on S0, connected
fluid lines, and removed the keel pins on S1. Hatch close was probably
around 2042 UTC, with repressurization at 2047 UTC. This gives a depress
duration of about 6h43m (6h36m by NASA rules).
The current configuration of the Station is with the S1 and S0 truss
elements atop the Destiny lab, and the P6 truss in its temporary
location above Z1/Unity. The next mission will add P1 on the other side
of S0; like S1, P1 carries ammonia cooling systems and deployable
radiators.
Atlantis undocked on Oct 16 at 1313 UTC. It flew around the station and
departed at 1501UTC. An orbit lowering burn at around 2030 UTC on Oct 17
changed its orbit from 373 x 404 km to 273 x 404 km. On Oct 18 at 1436
UTC the deorbit burn further lowered the orbit to 18 x 401 km, and
Atlantis reentered the atmosphere at 1512 UTC, successfully completing
its mission with a landing on runway 33 at Kennedy Space Center at 1543
UTC.
Soyuz No. 211 (Soyuz TMA-1) was launched on Oct 30 aboard a Soyuz-FG
rocket. It carries the EP-4 crew (Visiting crew no. 4) of Sergey
Zalyotin (commander), Frank De Winne (flight engineer 1), and Yuriy
Lonchakov (flight engineer 2) on ISS mission 5S. The Soyuz TMA is a
minor modification of the Soyuz TM, with the descent module improved to
provide space for taller crew members and with enhanced soft-landing
systems. The Soyuz-FG (11A511U-FG) is a minor modification of the Soyuz-U,
with improved fuel injectors on the engines.
Launch was at 0311 UTC; the four strapons (Blok B,V,G,D) were jettisoned
successfully. The Blok A core (`second’) stage burned until 0315 UTC and
then separated; the Blok I third stage then fired, placing itself in
orbit at 0320 UTC. Blok I then separated from Soyuz TMA-1, and
Soyuz TMA-1 deployed its solar panels.
The next Shuttle mission is STS-113. Orbiter OV-105 Endeavour will carry
the P1 truss to the Station and attach it to the S0 truss. Endeavour
also will deploy the MEPSI satellite for the US Air Force and DARPA.
MEPSI (Micro-Electromechanical-based Picosat Satellite Inspection
Experiment) consists of two 1 kg boxes attached to each other by a 15-m
tether. The boxes include an imaging camera and a MEM transceiver. They
will be ejected from the PLA (Picosat Launch Assembly), a 6 kg box
attached to an Adaptive Payload Carrier (APC) on the payload bay side
wall.
Jonathan’s Cargo Bay Manifest estimate for STS-113:
Mass/kg
Bay 1-2 Orbiter Docking System 1800
2 EMU spacesuits? 240?
Bay 3S MEPSI 8
Bay 3-13 P1 Integrated Truss Segment 12193?
CETA Cart B 283?
Sill RMS 410
---------------------------------------------------------------
Total 14934?
Nobel Prize for Riccardo Giacconi
———————————
Addendum: The detailed information from www.nobel.se makes it clear the
prize was given to Riccardo not just for the Aerobee flight but also for
the Uhuru satellite (the first X-ray sky survey), the Einstein
Observatory (the first imaging X-ray observatory) and the early work on
Chandra. It is worth noting that the actual Aerobee flight AB3.352 was
carried out at White Sands by Herb Gursky, Riccardo’s main collaborator
at the time.
Recent Launches
—————
A Soyuz-U exploded seconds after launch from Plesetsk on Oct 15. The
payload was the Foton-M materials processing satellite. A few seconds
after launch, foreign material in a fuel line caused drastic problems in
the Blok-D strapon’s engine; it appears that the Blok-D tore away from
the stack, the other parts of the stack automatically shut down their
engines, and the rocket fell back on the pad area, killing one person.
Note: Do not confuse the Soyuz Blok D stage with the Blok D stage used
on N-1/L3 and Proton, the only connection is that both are the 4th stage
in an alphabetical sequence specific to their original launchers. In the
case of Soyuz-U, the core stage is Blok A, and the four strapons are B,
V, G and D (following Cyrillic alphabetical order). Blok E was the
original Vostok upper stage; Blok I is the current Soyuz upper stage,
and Blok L is a fourth stage used on the Molniya variant (the
intervening letters Zh, Z, and K were not used on stages that
actually flew).
Foton-M No. 1 (Foton-13) was an improved version of the Foton materials
processing satellite, itself a derivative of the venerable Vostok/Zenit
satellite that has been flying since 1960. The 6425 kg satellite carried
a variety of microgravity experiments including a set from the European
Space Agency. The satellite was destroyed in the accident.
The European Space Agency’s Integral astrophysics satellite was launched on
Oct 17 on a Russian Proton-K/DM2 launch vehicle. The three-stage
Krunichev Proton-K put the DM2 and Integral in a 198 x 656 km x 51.6 deg
parking orbit 9 min after launch. The Energiya DM2 stage, the
commercial version of the 17S40 variant, made a single burn to a 688 x
152681 km x 51.5 deg transfer orbit and then separated. Integral’s
first perigee raising burn was successful on Oct 24, and was followed by
two more burns on about Oct 26, putting it in a 7231 x 152890 km orbit.
Target perigee is 10000 km.
Integral (the International Gamma Ray Laboratory) is a 3951 kg
satellite built by Alenia Spazio and based on the XMM-Newton service
module design. It carries the following telescopes:
- IBIS, a 1.1m square coded mask telescope with two detectors, the ISGRI imager covering the 20 -1000 keV energy range and the PICsIT imager covering the 160 – 10000 keV energy range.
- SPI, a 0.7m coded mask telescope with a germanium spectrometer to obtain spectra in the 20-8000 keV range.
- JEM-X, two 0.5m coded mask telescopes covering the 3-35 keV range.
- OMC, the optical monitor camera, a 0.05m aperture optical telescope.
Integral covers the hard X-ray and soft gamma ray range; IBIS has 12
arcminute spatial resolution which is better than previous missions.
Previous missions covering the same energy range include SIGMA/Granat,
the BATSE, OSSE and COMPTEL instruments on Compton, and the high
energy detectors on BeppoSAX.
The COS-B and the Compton/EGRET telescopes observed higher energy gamma
rays (above 10 MeV), and the Chandra and XMM-Newton telescopes study
lower energy X-rays (below 10 keV); Integral covers three decades of
photon frequency space between these two regimes.
China launched its second ZY-2 imaging satellite on Oct 27. The ZY-2
(Zi Yuan 2) satellites are low-orbit non-recoverable imaging satellites
probably of a similar design to the ZY-1 series which are a
collaborative effort with Brazil under the CBERS (China-Brazil
Enviromental Research Satellite) program. Some Western observers have
speculated that ZY-2 satellites are military in nature.
The CZ-4B launch vehicle took off from Taiyuan space center at 0317 UTC.
The third stage began its burn about 4 min after launch and shut down
about 11 min after launch in a 470 x 483 km x 97.4 deg orbit, separating
from the ZY-2 payload.
ZY launches so far:
- ZY-1 1999 Oct 14 (CBERS 1)
- ZY-2 2000 Sep 1
- ZY-2 2002 Oct 27
A second ZY-1/CBERS is planned.
Table of Recent Launches
———————–
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
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
Sep 15 1030 HTSTL-1? KT-1 Taiyuan Technology F01
Sep 18 2204 Hispasat 1D Atlas IIAS Canaveral SLC36A Comms 44A
Sep 25 1658 Progress M1-9 Soyuz-FG Baykonur Cargo 45A
Sep 26 1427 Nadezhda-M Kosmos-3M Plesetsk Navigation 46A
Oct 7 1946 Atlantis ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39B Spaceship 47A
S1 ) Station module
Oct 15 1820 Foton-M Soyuz-U Plesetsk Micrograv F02
Oct 17 0441 Integral Proton Baykonur Astronomy 48A
Oct 27 0317 ZY-2 CZ-4B Taiyuan Imaging 49A
Oct 30 0311 Soyuz TMA-1 Soyuz-FG Baykonur Spaceship 50A
Current Shuttle Processing Status
_________________________________
Orbiters Location Mission Launch DueOV-102 Columbia OPF STS-107 2003 Jan 16 Spacehab OV-103 Discovery OPF Maintenance OV-104 Atlantis OPF STS-114 2003 Mar 1 ISS ULF1 OV-105 Endeavour LC39A STS-113 2002 Nov 10 ISS 11A
.-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'
