Jonathan's Space Report No. 320 1997 Apr 30 Cambridge, MA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Editorial --------- As part of research for a paper on the history of solid rocket motors, I have compiled a launch log of all solid motors used as launch vehicle final stages and apogee motors. I'd be grateful to anyone who can provide corrections or fill in omissions. The log is available at http://hea-www.harvard.edu/QEDT/jcm/space/rockets/notes.html Shuttle and Mir --------------- Atlantis was rolled out to pad 39A on Apr 24 in preparation for the launch of STS-84 on May 15. STS-83R has been renamed STS-94; the missions up to STS-93 were far enough along in planning that it would have been inconvenient to change all their documentation. Columbia will have the same crew and cargo as before, and will launch on Jul 1. Vasiliy Tsibliev and Jerry Linenger donned their Orlan-DMA spacesuits and made a 5 hour spacewalk on Apr 29. They left the airlock at 0510 UTC and returned to Kvant-2 at 1008 UTC after 4h 57m. The astronauts retrieved some sample collection experiments from the outside of the complex. Flight engineer Aleksandr Lazutkin remained inside the Mir complex. Recent Launches --------------- GOES K was launched from Cape Canaveral on Apr 25. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite has been renamed GOES 10 now that it is in orbit safely. Operated by NOAA, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the GOES satellites provide those familiar continent-wide views of the weather, operating in collaboration with NOAA's low polar orbiting satellites which provide smaller-area closeups. GOES K is the third of the 3-axis-stabilized GOES-Next series of satellites, built by Space Systems/Loral. Earlier GOES versions were spin-stabilized vehicles built by Hughes and by SS/Loral's precursor, Ford Aerospace. GOES 10 will be used as an orbital spare. It was placed in an initial 167 x 42131 km x 27.1 deg transfer orbit. By Apr 29 it had maneuvered to a 10907 x 42227 km x 8.1 deg orbit on its way to geosynchronous. Launch vehicle for GOES K was the final Atlas I Centaur, serial AC-79. The Atlas I (Roman numeral 1) Centaur per se first flew in Jul 1990, as a renamed version of the Atlas G (letter G) Centaur to distinguish it from the stretched Atlas II which was considered a significantly different vehicle. The first Atlas Centaur, AC-1, an Atlas D/Centaur D variant, was launched on a suborbital test flight in May 1962 but failed less than a minute after launch. The second Centaur D, AC-2, reached orbit in Nov 1963 as the first space flight of a high-energy fuel (liquid hydrogen) rocket. I have recently compiled a list of all Centaur launches, and all orbital objects associated with those launches. You can find it at: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/QEDT/jcm/space/misc/centaur.html Thanks to the Canarians who wrote to me defending the status of their islands as part of the European cultural and political spheres. Nevertheless, I maintain that geographically it's not part of Europe, just as a satellite launch from Hawaii would not be from North America. Table of Recent Launches ------------------------ Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. DES. Mar 1 0107 Intelsat 801 Ariane 44P Kourou ELA2 Comsat 09A Mar 4 0200 Zeya Start-1 Svobodniy LC5 Comsat 10A Mar 8 0601 Tempo 2 Atlas IIA Canaveral LC36A Comsat 11A Apr 4 1647 DMSP 5D-2 S-14 Titan 23G Vandenberg SLC4W Weather 12A Apr 4 1920 Columbia/STS-83) Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 13A MSL-1 Spacelab ) Apr 6 1604 Progress M-34 Soyuz-U Baykonur Cargo 14A Apr 9 0900? Kosmos-2340 Molniya-M Plesetsk EarlyWarn 15A Apr 16 2309 Thaicom 3 ) Ariane 44LP Kourou ELA2 Comsat 16A BSAT 1a ) 16B Apr 17 1303 Kosmos-2341 Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC132/1 Navsat 17A Apr 21 1159 Minisat-01 ) Pegasus XL L-1011, Gando Technology 18A Celestis ) Burial 18B Apr 25 0549 GOES 10 Atlas I Canaveral LC36B Weather 19A Current Shuttle Processing Status ____________________________________________ Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 1 STS-94 Jul 1 OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-85 Aug 7 OV-104 Atlantis LC39A STS-84 May 15 OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 3 STS-86 Sep 25 ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks ML1/RSRM-62 VAB Bay 1 STS-94 ML2/RSRM-60/ET-85/OV-104 LC39A STS-84 ML3/ .-------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 | | Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | | | Astrophysics | | | 60 Garden St, MS6 | | | Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@urania.harvard.edu | | USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu | | | | JSR: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/QEDT/jcm/space/jsr/jsr.html | | Back issues: ftp://sao-ftp.harvard.edu/pub/jcm/space/news/news.* | '-------------------------------------------------------------------------'