No 620 2009 Dec 30 Somerville, MA

A happy 2010 to all my readers! Those of you at the American Astronomical Society next week, please stop by the Chandra booth and say hi

Shuttle and Station

Soyuz TMA-17 was launched on Dec 20 carrying Oleg Kotov, T J Creamer and Soichi Noguchi on their way to join Expedition 22 crewmembers Jeff Williams and Maksim Suraev TMA-17 is spacecraft article 11F732A17 factory model 7K-STMA No 227, carrying out ISS mission 21S

On Dec 22 at 2248 UTC Soyuz TMA-17 docked with the nadir port on Zarya Soyuz TMA-16 is at Zvezda's aft port, the Progress M-03M cargo ship is at the Pirs port, and the Poisk and PMA-2 ports are empty

Helios IIB

France's Helios IIB spy satellite was launched on Dec 18 The 4200 kg craft is based on the SPOT remote sensing satellites and is probably in a 680 km sun-synchronous orbit In a new policy, the US has stopped releasing the orbital elements of French military satellites

The launch vehicle was production no L532, an old Ariane 5GS model with an EPS upper stage Only two of the last 23 launches have used the 5GS model rather than the enhanced 5ECA with the cryogenic ESC-A upper stage Based on public information and comparison with other polar Ariane missions, I conclude that the EPC core stage, which separated 400 km above -53W 20N at 1635 UTC, probably entered an orbit of approximately -2690 x 800 km x 90 9 deg, reaching apogee over Newfoundland at 1644 UTC and reentering over the North Pole at 1657 UTC The EPS stage burned from 1635 to 1652 UTC and entered an estimated 665 x 665 km x 98 3 deg orbit over Baffin Island, coasting half an orbit until Helios IIB separated from it at 1725 UTC over the Indian Ocean north of the ground station at Perth

WISE

After the WISE infrared astronomical observatory separated into a 526 x 531 km x 97 5 deg orbit, its Delta rocket second stage depleted the rest of its fuel with an extra pair of burns that put the empty stage in a 2113 x 11086 km x 97 5 deg disposal orbit, unusually high for a Delta II

WISE ejected its telescope cover at 2230 UTC on Dec 29 into a marginally lower 525 x 531 km orbit, and is now ready to begin observing

DirectTV 12

DirecTV 12 is a 5900 kg Boeing 702 satellite for television broadcasting It was launched by Proton-M on Dec 29 into a -386 x 173 km x 48 0 deg marginally suborbital trajectory The Briz-M stage then made five burns to 133 x 273 km x 48 deg, 245 x 5000 km x 47 deg, 310 x 15387 km x 46 deg, 405 x 35816 km x 46 deg, and 5120 x 35786 km x 20 7 deg, where the payload separated

Russian missile

Russia carried out its third long range missile test of the month on Dec 24, with the launch of an R-36M2 'Voevoda' from the missile base at Yasniy (also known as Dombarovskiy) which has also been used for Dnepr satellite launches The R-36M2, or 15A18M, is related to the Tsiklon and Dnepr launch vehicles and is made by the Ukranian Yuzhnoe company; it carries ten MIRVed reentry vehicles The rocket's NATO designation is SS-18 The reentry vehicles landed in the usual Kura target range in Kamchatka, which has been repeatedly pummeled by ICBM dummy warheads since 1957 This is the sixth know rocket launch from Yasniy

Object 5426 - not part of a Soviet lunar lander after all

US satellite catalog entry number SSN 5426 is in a 622 x 744 km x 49 5 deg orbit; it has a small radar cross section and a slow decay rate, so it is probably a small, dense object It currently sports the international designation 1971-069C, which alleges its connection with the Soviet T2K lunar lander test flight Kosmos-434 (SSN 5407), but I think this is probably a misidentification Because of the interest in reconstructing the Soviet lunar mission flight profiles, it's worth sorting this out

Kosmos-434 was launched by a Soyuz rocket into low 189 x 267 km orbit The lunar module's engine made a burn simulating the lunar landing burn, putting it in elliptical orbit of 190 x 1261 km It then jettisoned its landing leg section and other debris and made another burn to a 180 x 11834 km orbit in a simulation of lunar ascent

The first few historical element sets for 5426 were indeed a debris object from Kosmos-434, in a 183 x 1196 km x 51 7 deg elliptical orbit similar to SSN 5427 and SSN 5428 Like those objects, it probably reentered in Sep-Oct 1971, but on Sep 1 the number was reassigned (probably due to a radar tagging mistake as the two objects crossed paths) to the current object, which at that time was in a 700 x 925 km x 49 6 deg orbit What could SSN 5426 be? The most likely answer is a despin weight associated with the French Eole satellite, launched by a US Scout rocket into a 676 x 905 km x 50 1 deg orbit in mid-Aug 1971 The orbital period is about right and the ascending node is spot on The small change in inclination corresponds to a velocity change of about 100 m/s which is of the same order as the other Eole debris object, SSN 5440/1971-71C I conclude that SSN 5426 and SSN 5440 are the two despin weights known to have been ejected from the Eole satellite at 1855 UTC on 1971 Aug 16, and that SSN 5426 should be 1971-071D, not 1971-069C

Table of Recent (orbital) Launches

Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL
DES Dec 6 0147 WGS 3 Delta 4M+(5,4) Canaveral SLC37B Comms 68A Dec 9 0842 Yaogan Weixing 7 Chang Zheng 2D Jiuquan Imaging? 69A Dec 14 1038 Kosmos-2456 ) Proton-M/DM2 Baykonur LC81 Navigation 70A Kosmos-2457 ) Navigation 70B Kosmos-2458 ) Navigation 70C Dec 14 1409 WISE Delta 7320 Vandenberg SLC2W Astronomy 71A Dec 15 0231 Yaogan Wexing 8 ) Chang Zheng 4C Taiyuan Imaging? 72A Xi Wang 1 ) Comms 72B Dec 18 1626 Helios IIB Ariane 5GS Kourou ELA3 Imaging 73A Dec 20 2152 Soyuz TMA-17 Soyuz-FG Baykonur LC1 Spaceship 74A Dec 29 0022 DirecTV 12 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC200/39 Comms 75A

Table of Recent (suborbital) Launches

Date UT Payload/Flt Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission Apogee/km Dec 9 0645? RV Bulava TK-208, White Sea Test 500? Dec 10 1135 RV Topol' Kapustin Yar Test 1000? Dec 16 Sejjil RV Sejjil 2 Iran Test 800? Dec 16 1200? NASA 12 068GT Mesquito Wallops Island Test 90? Dec 17 0325 NASA 41 086UO Terrier Orion White Sands Airglow 130? Dec 24 RV x 10? R-36M2 Yasniy Test 1000?

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