Jonathan’s Space Report No. 564 2006 May 4
Station
——-
The cargo ship Progress M-56 docked with Zvezda on Apr 26 at 1741 UTC, joining Progress M-55 and the Soyuz TMA-8 ferry ship at the Station. Meanwhile, Discovery has been moved to the VAB in preparation for launch from Kennedy Space Center on July 1.
Yaogan
——
The Yaogan 1 remote sensing satellite was launched by CZ-4B rocket from China’s Taiyuan space center on Apr 26. The satellite was built by the Shanghai SAST group, which also builds the Feng Yun weather satellites. Yaogan 1 entered a 601 x 621 km x 97.8 deg initial orbit; from Apr 29 to May 1 it raised its orbit to 628 x 629 km x 97.8 deg. The CZ-4B third stage ended up in a 451 x 624 km orbit after a depletion burn.
Kosmos-2420
———–
Russia launched an imaging reconnaissance satellite on May 3 under the code name Kosmos-2420. Kosmos-2420 was placed in a 168 x 338 km x 67 degree orbit after launch from Plesetsk. It is probably the second Kobal’t-M satellite, built by the Arsenal factory. Kobal’t-M carries small film recovery capsules and one large reentry vehicle with the camera and more film.
Cassini
——-
Cassini made another flyby of Titan at 2058 UTC on Apr 30, at an altitude of 1855 km and an inertial velocity of 5.84 km/s.
Cloudsat/Calipso
—————-
The NASA Cloudsat satellite and the Calipso satellite, a joint CNES (France) and NASA project, were launched on a Delta rocket on Apr 28. The Delta stage entered a 173 x 684 km x 98.1 deg transfer orbit and then a 687 x 689 km x 98.2 deg deployment orbit. After deploying the two payloads, Delta depleted its remaining fuel and ended up in a 206 x 624 km x 102.8 deg disposal orbit.
Calipso carries a 1-meter lidar telescope to study clouds and aerosols, and an imaging IR radiometer. The NASA part of the project is considered to be an ESSP (Earth System System Pathfinder) mission. Cloudsat is another ESSP mission, and carries a 94 GHz cloud profiling radar. Both satellites are in the A-train polar constellation, in the same orbit as the large Aqua and Aura satellites.
Table of Recent Launches
———————–
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Mar 11 2233 Hotbird 7A ) Ariane 5 ECA Kourou ELA3 Comms 07A
Spainsat )
Mar 22 1403 ST5-FWD ) Pegasus XL L1011,WTR Tech 08A
ST5-MID ) 08B
ST5-AFT ) 08C
Mar 24 2230 Falconsat-2 Falcon 1 Omelek Tech F01
Mar 30 0230 Soyuz TMA-8 Soyuz-FG Baykonur LC1 Spaceship 09A
Apr 12 2330 JCSAT-9 Zenit-3SL Odyssey, POR Comms 10A
Apr 15 0140 Formosat-3 FM1 ) Minotaur Vandenberg SLC8 Science 11A
Formosat-3 FM2 ) Science 11B
Formosat-3 FM3 ) Science 11C
Formosat-3 FM4 ) Science 11D
Formosat-3 FM5 ) Science 11E
Formosat-3 FM6 ) Science 11F
Apr 20 2027 Astra 1KR Atlas V 411 Canaveral SLC41 Comms 12A
Apr 24 1603 Progress M-56 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 13A
Apr 25 1647 EROS B Start-1 Svobodniy Imaging 14A
Apr 26 2248 Yaogan 1 CZ-4B Taiyuan Imaging? 15A
Apr 28 1002 Cloudsat ) Delta 7420 Vandenberg SLC2W Rem.Sensing 16
Calipso ) Rem.Sensing 16
May 3 1738 Kosmos-2420 Soyuz-U Plesetsk LC16 Imaging 17A
.-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Somerville MA 02143 | inter : jcm@host.planet4589.org | | USA | jcm@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://www.planet4589.org/jsr.html | | Back issues: http://www.planet4589.org/space/jsr/back | | Subscribe/unsub: mail majordomo@host.planet4589.org, (un)subscribe jsr | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'
