Jonathan’s Space Report No. 494 2003 Feb 23
Shuttle and Station
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Astronauts Bowersox, Pettit and Budarin remain aboard the International
Space Station. The Progress M-47 cargo craft is docked to the aft Zvezda
port and the Soyuz TMA-1 transport ship is docked to the Pirs module.
The STS-107 investigation continues. It is still not clear what the root
cause of the accident is, although investigation continues into the foam
impacts and the possibility that minor damage to the wing could trigger
early boundary layer transition and higher than normal heating. As usual
in such accidents, it is likely that several problems were missed and
contributed to the disaster. It’s also likely that each problem was
recognized, worried about, but ultimately dismissed by management. I
confidently expect the usual rush to crucify those who made guesses that
turned out to be wrong, and urge everyone to remember that hindsight is
easy.
Analysis so far supports the idea of a breach somewhere in the left
wing, allowing hot gas to reach the landing gear area and parts of the
left fuselage, and changing the aerodynamics of the wing. New data
indicates a lot of RCS thruster activity just before loss of contact,
suggesting to me that loss of vehicle control may have been the
proximate cause of the destruction. Loss of voice communications and
interruption of telemetry was at 1359:32 UTC; a final 2 second telemetry
fragment shows that most of Columbia was intact up to 1400:04 UTC.
Ground video shows multiple contrails at 1400:30 UTC.
Last week I praised JSC’s Ron Dittemore. Now I have to chide a different
part of NASA. In a fit of apparent bureaucratic insanity, GSFC’s OIG
(Orbital Information Group) web site that makes orbital data available
to the public has removed the orbital data for STS-107, stating:
“The OIG has secured access to all STS-107 data for the duration of
the investigation and review period. The OIG Web site will reinstate access to
the data following official release of support by JSC. 02/03/2003”
What possible reason can there be for this? The data had *already* been
made public; it doesn’t interfere with the investigators’ access to the
data to keep it available for everyone else. It seems totally at
variance with the openness of the rest of the investigation, and just
begs for conspiracy theorists and UFO nuts to start thinking NASA has
something to hide. I completely understand wanting not to release
preliminary engineering analysis from the investigation, but this is
data that was made available in a standard way while the mission
was still up, and was circulated as it came out on several internet lists.
Anyway, I already archived the data I have at
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/elements/27600/S27647
if anyone wants it.
Recent Launches
—————
The MAP satellite, part of NASA’s MIDEX Explorer program, has been
renamed the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) after David T.
Wilkinson (1935-2002), one of the leaders of the COBE and MAP satellite
projects.
The WMAP team announced their preliminary results on Feb 11. For those
familiar with cosmology, the answers are:
- H0 = 71 +/- 3 km/s/Mpc (if Lambda is z-independent)
- Omega-total = 1.02 +/- 0.02
- Omega-baryon = 0.047, Omega-CDM = 0.23, Omega-Lambda = 0.73 +/- 0.04
- t0 (age of Universe) = 13.7 +/- 0.2 Gyr
- t(reionization) = 0.2 Gyr (from polarization) z(reion)= 17+/-5
- t(last scattering) = 0.38 Myr z(last scat) = 1088 +/-2
- w < -0.78
- No evidence for non-gaussian structure.
We’ve been wanting to know these numbers for a long time. For those of
you to whom the above is gibberish, just understand that it makes us
very happy. There are still a number of model-dependent assumptions in
some of the WMAP results though, and I anticipate spirited attempts to
knock a few holes in the above values over the next few years.
The final Ariane 4 was launched on Feb 15. Flight V159, an Ariane 44L
model, took off from the South American launch site and placed the third
stage and the Intelsat 907 communications satellite in geostationary
transfer orbit. There were 144 launches of the Ariane 1/2/3/4 series
rockets from pads ELA1 and ELA2 at Kourou; this includes 7 launch
failures. Ariane 5 is a completely new design and launches from pad
ELA3; it is expected to return to flight in March.
Mass of the Loral-built Intelsat 907 is 1473 kg dry; it carries 1947 kg
of propellant. 907 will provide international telephone and TV
transmission links for the Americas, Europe and Africa.
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has renamed the
METSAT-1 weather satellite. It will now be known as KALPANA-1,
after astronaut Dr. Kalpana Chawla (1961-2003).
The European Space Agency’s Artemis satellite reached its geostationary
position at 21.0E on 2003 Feb 5, after a year of ion engine burns to
raise its orbit. Artemis was launched on 2001 Jul 12 but the Ariane 5
upper stage cut off early and left it in a low 592 x 17548 km x 3.0 deg
transfer orbit. It used its bipropellant engine to reach a 30902 x
30964 km x 0.8 deg intermediate orbit by the end of Jul 2001 and then
began using the ion engine in Feb 2002.
Errata
———
Reports indicate that the XSS-10 propulsion system is a bipropellant
engine derived from the LEAP missile interceptor.
The Taurus Lite suborbital launch probably did not use the full-up
Orion 50SLXG motor planned for the ballistic missile interceptor,
just the current Taurus stage Orion 50SG.
Table of Recent Launches
———————–
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Jan 6 1419 Coriolis Titan II Vandenberg SLC4W Environment 01A
Jan 13 0045 ICESAT ) Delta 7320-10 Vandenberg SLC2W Environment 02A
CHIPSat ) Astronomy 02B
Jan 16 1539 Columbia ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39 Spaceship 03A
Spacehab ) Lab
Jan 25 2013 SORCE Pegasus XL Canaveral RW30/12 Solar obs 04A
Jan 29 1806 GPS SVN 56 ) Delta 7925 Canaveral SLC17 Navigation 05A
XSS-10 ) Technology 05B
Feb 2 1259 Progress M-47 Soyuz-U Baykonur Cargo 06A
Feb 15 0700 Intelsat 907 Ariane 44L Kourou ELA2 Comms 07A
Current Shuttle Processing Status
_________________________________
Orbiters Location Mission Launch DueOV-103 Discovery OPF Maintenance OV-104 Atlantis VAB STS-114 Unknown ISS ULF1 OV-105 Endeavour OPF STS-115 Unknown ISS 12A
.-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | 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 | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'
