Jonathan’s Space Report No. 490 – 2002 Nov 22
Shuttle and Station
——————–
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. Launch is scheduled
for Nov 23.
Endeavour’s crew are Jim Wetherbee (CDR), Paul Lockhart (PLT), Michael
Lopez-Alegria (MS1) and John Herrington (MS2). In addition, Ken Bowersox
(MS3), Nikolai Budarin (MS4) and Don Pettit (MS5) will fly on Endeavour
and replace the current station crew, becoming Expedition 6 (EO-6)
Commander, Flight Engineer 1, and Flight Engineer 2/Science Officer
respectively. The current EO-5 crew of Valeriy Korzun, Sergey Treshchev
and Peggy Whitson will return to Earth.
Soyuz TMA-1 docked with the Pirs module at 0501 UTC on Nov 1. The EP-4
visiting crew of Zalyotin, De Winne and Lonchakov have joined Korzun,
Treshchev and Whitson on the Station. On Nov 9 the EP-4 crew boarded
Soyuz TM-34 and undocked from the Zarya nadir port at 2044 UTC, leaving
Soyuz TMA-1 for the resident crew. Soyuz TM-34 landed in Kazakstan at
0004 UTC on Nov 10.
Recent Launches
—————
Galileo passed 160 km from Amalthea (Jupiter V) on its final Jovian moon
flyby. Closest approach was at 0618 UTC on Nov 5; perijove was at 0724
UTC at 71500 km above the cloud tops. A safemode at about 0648 UTC
caused loss of some data from the encounter.
Galileo is now in an orbit which will reach an apojove of 26.4 million
km in Apr 2003. The Sun’s gravity perturbs the orbit and causes the
current orbit periapsis height of 71000 km to slowly drop, becoming
negative in Jun 2003; Galileo will fall back to destructive entry into
the Jovian clouds on Sep 2003 with a final Jovicentric/ecliptic orbit at
that time of -9700 x 25434600 km x 1.7 deg.
The first Boeing Delta IV was launched successfully on Nov 20 at 2239
UTC. In Boeing’s arcane nomenclature system the vehicle was a Delta
4M+(4,2) and had two Alliant GEM-60 solid strapons, a single 5-m
diameter Delta CBC core stage with an RS-68 LOX/LH2 engine, and a
4-meter Delta 4 Second Stage with an RL10B-2 LOX/LH2 engine. The Delta 4
Second Stage is a stretched version of the Delta 3 stage 2. As far as I
know it doesn’t really have a name or designation of its own, but I’ll
refer to it as the D4SS-4 (Delta 4 Second Stage, 4-m version), to
distinguish it from what I’ll call the D3SS from Delta 3 and the D4SS-5
(5-m version of the same stage). The D4SS-4 is about 2850 kg on orbit
with a length of 12m to the end of the extended rocket nozzle and a
diameter of 4.0m.
D3SS (Delta 3 Second Stage) and derivatives
Flt. Type LV type Mission Date Payload Orbit
(km x km x deg)
1 D3SS Delta 8930 D259 1998 Aug 27 Galaxy 10 -
2 D3SS Delta 8930 D269 1999 May 5 Orion 3 159 x 1373 x 29
3 D3SS Delta 8930 D280 2000 Aug 23 DM-F3 163 x 20219 x 28
4 D4SS-4 Delta IVM+(4,2) DIV-1 2002 Nov 20 Eutelsat W5 562 x 35777 x 13
Note: Flight 1 was lost prior to D3SS ignition. Flight 2 failed at the
start of the second burn. The second stage seems to have worked well on
Flight 3 although there is some dispute about how successful the overall
flight was. In contrast to the dismal record of the Delta III, the Delta
IV has gotten off to an excellent start. Its rival, the Lockheed Martin
Atlas V, has also had one launch.
Planned Delta IV variants:
Strapons Core Stage 2
Delta IV-M - CBC D4SS-4
Delta IV-M+(4,2) 2x GEM-60 CBC D4SS-4
Delta IV-M+(5,2) 2x GEM-60 CBC D4SS-5
Delta IV-M+(5,4) 4x GEM-60 CBC D4SS-5
Delta IV-H 2x CBC CBC D4SS-5
The GEM60 motors separated 1min 40s after launch; the CBC separated at
4min 15s and the Delta 4 Stage 2 ignited, burning until 13min 6s and
entered parking orbit of 186 x 596 km x 27.2 deg (I think –
unfortunately, the Boeing webcast commentators had a habit of talking
over the voice of Delta launch control whenever critical data was being
reported, but these figures are consistent with the prelaunch plan.) At
23min after launch the second stage restarted for a 5 minute burn to
geostationary transfer orbit. The Eutelsat W5 payload separated from the
second stage at 37 min after launch into a 562 x 35777 km x 13.6 deg
orbit. The D4SS-4 then made a small depletion burn to end up in a 556 x
34635 km x 13.1 deg orbit.
Eutelsat W5 is an Alcatel Spacebus 3000B2 communications satellite for
the European Telecommunications Satellite Organization. The launch mass
is 3170 kg; the other Eutelsat W series satellites were about 3000 kg
full, 1400 kg empty, 4.6m high 2.5m diameter with a span of 29m across
the 2 solar panels. W5 carries 24 Ku-band transponders.
Eutelsat W series
Eutelsat W2 Spacebus 3000B2 1998 Oct 5 Ariane 44LP Eutelsat W3 Spacebus 3000B2 1999 Apr 12 Atlas 2AS Eutelsat W4 Spacebus 3000B2 2000 May 24 Atlas 3A Eutelsat W1 Eurostar 2000+ 2000 Sep 6 Ariane 44P Eurobird Spacebus 3000B2 2001 Mar 8 Ariane 5G Eutelsat W5 Spacebus 3000B2 2002 Nov 20 Delta IVM+(4,2)
This is the first launch from the rebuilt Space Launch Complex 37B.
Previous launches from the old LC37B site were:
1964 Jan 29 Saturn I SA-5 Jupiter nose cone and ballast 1964 May 28 Saturn I SA-6 Dummy Apollo BP-13 1964 Sep 18 Saturn I SA-7 Dummy Apollo BP-15 1965 Feb 16 Saturn I SA-9 Dummy Apollo BP-16/Pegasus 1 1965 May 25 Saturn I SA-8 Dummy Apollo BP-26/Pegasus 2 1965 Jul 30 Saturn I SA-10 Dummy Apollo BP-9A/Pegasus 3 1966 Jul 5 Saturn IB SA-203 Apollo AS-203 1968 Jan 22 Saturn IB SA-204 Lunar Module 1 (Apollo 5)
It’s interesting to note that the Saturn I second stage, the Douglas
S-IV, was powered by an earlier version of the RL-10 engine used by the
Delta IV’s D4SS-4.
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
Nov 20 2239 Eutelsat W5 Delta 4M+(4,2) Canaveral SLC37B Comms 51A
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 23 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'
