Jonathan's Space Report - Latest Issue

No. 577

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Jonathan's Space Report has some interesting information about the ISS
activity.  Some may not be interested in what goes on at the ISS but it
may well be representative of the type of information you would get back
from a Lunar Base.  Is this what you want to hear about, sitting Earth
bound?

Iran shot a rocket into the air, do I care?  As a kid I shot an arrow
into the air and it came to land on the roof of our house.  My dad cared
where I shot an arrow and I suppose those around the world would be
interested where rockets fired into the air, land.  Maybe why they were
fired into the air as well.

Some rockets don't fall to Earth, they cause satellites to break up and
make for a lot of debris.  As more and more rockets carry loads to
space, flying through shrapnel will continue to be a concern.  Loads
that don't make it to a proper orbit, still fueled, are a potential
problem as well.  We are reminded by Jonathan of a recent example.

Also note that Japan used their H2A rocket.

I hope you don't mind my copying Jonathan's Report below.

Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsletter: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update

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Jonathan's Space Report
No. 577                                        2007 Feb 25, Somerville, MA
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Shuttle and Station
--------------------

Lopez-Alegria, Williams and Tyurin continue on ISS as Expedition 14. LA
and Williams began another EVA on Feb 4. The Quest airlock was
depressurized and the hatch opened at 1336 UTC. The spacewalkers
completed reconfiguration of the ammonia cooling system, retracted the
aft radiator on the P6 truss, and began installation of cables that will
allow a docked Shuttle to get electrical power from the ISS solar
arrays. The astronauts returned to the airlock at 2025 UTC and closed
the hatch at 2033 UTC. The airlock was repressurized at 2049 UTC.

On Feb 8 at 1322 UTC Quest was again depressurized, with hatch open at
1324 UTC. Suni Williams emerged at 1332 UTC with LA exiting the lock at
1340 UTC. They went to the CETA carts on the truss, and took them to the
P3 truss segment where two small and two large thermal covers were
removed and stuffed into bags. The two bags, each about 9 kg and perhaps
0.5m across, were jettisoned at 1536 and 1542 UTC. After deploying
cargo attachment adapters on P3, and preparing the P5 truss for
its connection to P6 later in the year, the astronauts went to the PMA-2
docking port outside the Destiny lab to install the remaining SSPTS
cables for supplying visiting Shuttles with electrical power. The hatch
was closed at 2002 UTC and the airlock was repressurized at 2006 UTC.

On Feb 22 Lopez-Alegria and Tyurin made a spacewalk from the Pirs
airlock wearing spacesuits Orlan M-25 and M-27. The airlock was
depressurized by around 1005 UTC, and the hatch was opened at 1027 UTC;
egress was at 1045-1049 UTC; the Progress antenna was freed using
cutting tools by about 1245 UTC; at 1407 UTC, having left the aft
end of Zvezda, the astronauts jettisoned two cleaning towels used to
protect against thruster fuel contamination. After other minor
inspection and hardware installation tasks, they re-entered the Pirs
airlock at 1622-1627 UTC and closed the hatch at 1645 UTC, with
repressurizaton at 1649 UTC.  Thanks to Andrey Krasil'nikov for
help with some of the EVA times in this report.


Atlantis is now on the pad at KSC, being prepared for launch on mission
STS-117.

Iranian sounding rocket (not satellite)
--------------------------------------

On Feb 25 the Iranian Aerospace Research Institute announced the launch
of a 'space system' called 'Kavesh' (search). The Iranian news agency
talks about launching a rocket into space. At first it wasn't entirely
clear whether this reflected a successful orbital launch but a later
clarification established that it was a sounding rocket test. The rocket
has a maximum apogee of 150 km. Iran has launched missiles to that
height in the past, so what's new here is that it's a quasi-civilian
research payload, possibly testing systems for a later satellite launch.
It is not clear when the launch took place, what the name of the launch
vehicle is (possibly  based on the Shahab-3 ('Meteor')  missile, itself
derived from the North Korean Nodong) or what the launch site was
(perhaps the Shahroud missile test base at about 36.4N 55.0E; there is
also  reportedly a test site at Qom, 34.7N 50.9E and one at
Dasht-E-Kabir, 32.8N 51.9E; all these locations are uncertain). The
Iranian Aerospace Research Institute is based in Tehran and is, I
believe, conducting the launch under the auspices of the Iranian
National Space Agency formed in 2003 as part of the government of the
Islamic Republic of Iran.

Rosetta and New Horizons
------------------------

The European comet probe Rosetta made a 250 km flyby of Mars at 0157 UTC
on Feb 25. The probe will arrive at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in
2014; it was launched in Mar 2004 and made an Earth flyby in Mar 2005.
As Rosetta leaves the Mars gravitational sphere of influence it
enters a 0.78 x 1.59 AU solar orbit inclined 1.9 deg to the ecliptic,
setting it up for another Earth flyby in November.

Pluto New Horizons makes its closest approach to Jupiter on Feb 28
at 0541 UTC, at a distance of 2.305 million km just outside the orbit of
Callisto; the inert Star 48 third stage of the New Horizons launch flies
past Jupiter at 2.8 million km at 0144 UTC the same day. New Horizons'
Centaur AV-010 second stage has been left far behind, meandering through
the asteroid belt 2.8 AU from the Sun.

Beidou
------

China launched a navigation satellite towards geostationary orbit
on Feb 2. The CZ-3A rocket put the fourth Beidou payload in a
192 x 41772 km x 25.0 deg supersynchronous transfer orbit.
As of Feb 24, the Beidou satellite - reportedly the first of a new
generation - remained in this transfer orbit and had not moved to
geostationary, suggesting the possibility that it may have failed.

FY-1C
-----

710 pieces of debris were cataloged from the previous record debris
event, an accidental fragmentation of the Pegasus/HAPS rocket stage from
the 1994-029 launch. As of Feb 20, 786 pieces had been cataloged from
the destruction of the Chinese FY-1C satellite in a space weapons test,
breaking the record and officially making the FY-1C destruction the
worst orbital debris event since the formation of the Moon. By Feb 25
the number had reached 916 pieces. The accidental explosion on Feb 19 of
the Arabsat-4 Briz upper stage 2006-06B, stranded in orbit in 2006 with
tonnes of propellant left on board, is thought to have generated
hundreds more debris objects, none of which have yet been cataloged.

HST
---

Failure of the Hubble Space Telescope's ACS (Advanced Camera for Surveys)
is a major blow to space astronomy: ACS was being used for about 80
percent of observations, although some programs can be switched to
the less capable WFPC-2 camera. One of ACS's three sub-cameras has
been recovered - the ultraviolet SBC (Solar Blind Channel) camera
is now operable again, but the main visible-light imagers are thought
to be lost for good.


THEMIS
------

NASA's THEMIS mission was launched on Feb 17 by United Launch Alliance
using a Boeing Delta 7925-10C vehicle. The Delta 7925 rocket entered a
182 x 563 km x 28.5 deg initial orbit; the second burn of the second
stage moved it to a 518 x 1528 km x 26.6 deg orbit. The third stage then
spun up, separated and fired to go to a 469 x 87337 km x 16.0 deg orbit.
After a five minute coast, two despin weights were unreeled and then the
five THEMIS probes were separated. The second stage later made a third
burn to lower its orbit to 184 x 1510 km x 22.1 deg, ensuring a short
orbital life for this stage.

The THEMIS (Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during
Substorms) probes, built by Swales Aerospace, are 76 kg dry, 125 kg
fully fuelled, and 0.8m across with booms spanning 40.2 m. They carry
four 4.4N orbit adjust thrusters and will end up in a variety of high
apogee orbits, measuring particles and fields to study magnetospheric
storms. The mission is a NASA MIDEX Explorer led by UC Berkeley.

IGS
---

Japan launched two spy satellites on Feb 24, the Information Gathering
Satellite Radar-2 and the IGS Optical-3 Verification Satellite. Earlier
IGS satellites were placed in 490 km sun-synchronous orbits. Optical-1
and Radar-1 were launched in Mar 2003; two satellites lost in a Nov 2003
launch failure  would have been Optical-2 and Radar-2 on reaching orbit
- I'll call them Optical-2a and Radar-2a although those are not
official names. In an effort to recover quickly, a second Optical-2 was
launched on its own in Sep 2006 while the new Radar-2 was still being
completed. The Optical-3 Verification Satellite is an experimental
second-generation optical imaging craft that hitched a ride with
Radar-2; I'll unofficially call it Optical-3V for short (it's not 100
percent clear from translations that the Verification qualifier applies
to just the Optical satellite, but that seems to be the balance of
evidence).

The H2A rocket serial number F-12 used the 2024 version with two large
and four small strapons, and the 4/4D-LC fairing which releases into
orbit the upper satellite adapter and two side lower fairing panels as
well as the two payloads.


Table of Recent Launches
-----------------------
Date UT       Name            Launch Vehicle  Site            Mission    INTL.
                                                                       DES.
Jan 10 0416   Cartosat-2  )     PSLV            Sriharikota LP1  Imaging     01B
           SRE-1       )                                      Tech        01C
           LAPAN Tubsat)                                      Imaging     01A
           Pehuensat   )                                      Comms       01D
Jan 18 0212   Progress M-59     Soyuz-U         Baykonur LC1     Cargo       02A
Jan 30 2322   NSS 8             Zenit-3SL       SL Odyssey, POR  Comms       F01
Feb  2 1628   Beidou 2A         Chang Zheng 3A  Xichang          Navigation  03A
Feb 17 2301   THEMIS P1 )       Delta 7925      Canaveral SLC17B Science     04A
           THEMIS P2 )                                        Science     04B
           THEMIS P3 )                                        Science     04C
           THEMIS P4 )                                        Science     04D
           THEMIS P5 )                                        Science     04E
Feb 24 0441   IGS Radar-2    )  H-2A 2024       Tanegashima YLP1 Radar       05A
           IGS Optical-3V )                                   Imaging     05B


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|  Jonathan McDowell                 |  phone : (617) 495-7176            |
|  Somerville MA 02143               |  inter : jcm@host.planet4589.org   |
|  USA                               |          jcm@cfa.harvard.edu       |
|                                                                         |
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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

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