Jonathan's Space Report

No 654 2012 Feb 18 Somerville, MA USA

Space Station

Expedition 30 continues with Soyuz TMA-22 docked at Poisk and Soyuz TMA-03M docked to the Rassvet module At about 0h on Feb 12 a switching unit reset on the truss cut off power to solar array 3B and to one of the Z1 control gyros; the systems were restored later that day

Flight Engineer-3 Kononenko and FE-1 Shkaplerov made a spacewalk from the Pirs module on Feb 16 using suits Orlan-MK No 4 and No 6 respectively They relocated the `Strela' GStM-1 crane from Pirs to Poisk and installed the Vinoslivost materials exposure experiment Installation of some SMDP space debris protection panels on Zvezda was deferred to a later occasion because the crane move took longer than expected The Pirs airlock was depressurized from 1408 to 2049 UTC (6hr41min) and the hatch was open from 1431 to 2046 UTC (6h15min) At 1904 UTC the MLI cover for the Poisk Strela baseplate was jettisoned into orbit; it has not yet been cataloged

Book Note - "Rockets and People"

The fourth and final volume of Boris Chertok's memoirs, with a NASA-sponsored English translation edited by Asif Siddiqi, has now been published This volume covers the Soviet side of the race to land humans on the Moon, with inside stories of the N-1/L-3 launch attempts All four volumes are highly recommended

Iranian satellite

Iran reports that it has launched the Navid-e Elm-o Sanat satellite into low orbit on Feb 3 It carries a panchromatic imager, possibly developed by the Iranian Univ of Sci and Technology (IUST, or in Persian, Daneshgah Elm-o Sanat Iran), Tehran Another report says that the satellite was built by Tehran's Sharif University of Technology (Daneshgah-e Sanati-ye Sharif)

The satellite's name means something like "Promise (Herald, Gospel, Good News, Harbinger) of Science and Technology"

Orbital data from US tracking shows Navid and the Safir second stage rocket in a 275 x 374 km x 56 0 deg orbit, and analysis indicates a launch at around 0004 UTC on Feb 3

Vega

ESA's new small satellite launch vehicle, Vega, made its first flight successfully on Feb 13

Vega has three solid motor stages, P80FW, Zefiro 23, and the Zefiro 9A third stage The Zefiro stages are built by Avio spA of Colleferro, Italy Avio's main space motor plant was originally the Bombrini Parodi Delfino explosives factory (1912-1994) and later part of Fiat (1994-2003); I believe their first space motor was a communications satellite apogee motor built for the Europa rocket and later used for ESA's Geos-1 A Ukrainian-built RD-869 engine is used in the Avio fourth stage, the Attitude and Vernier Upper Module (AVUM), which uses liquid propellants (UDMH/N2O4) P80FW is developed by the Europropulsion joint venture (Avio plus France's SNECMA) The overall launch vehicle is produced by ELV SpA, a joint venture of Avio and the Italian space agency ASI

The LARES 'Laser Relativity Satellite' is the primary payload The 390 kg, 0 38m dia tungsten sphere studded with 92 laser retroreflectors will be used as a test particle to probe relativistic effects in the Earth's gravitational field Stefan Barensky informs me that LARES is claimed to have the lowest ballistic coefficient of any satellite launched to date (this means its orbit will be very stable); I estimate the BC is around 0 0011 m**2/kg but would be interested to hear other estimates

The next largest payload is AlmaSat-1, a 12 5 kg student satellite from the University of Bologna, which will test a cold gas microthruster system and the platform for a future Earth observing satellite

The Lares Support System, attached to the AVUM, can be considered an additional payload, as it includes extensive instrumentation to monitor the launch It also deployed seven 1U Cubesats from three P-POD deployers P-POD 1 contained XaTcobeo, from the University of Vigo; `e-st@r' from the Politecnico di Torino; and ROBUSTA from the Universite' de Montpellier 2 P-POD 2 ejected MaSat-1 from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics; Goliat from the University of Bucharest; and PW-Sat-1 from the Warsaw Inst of Technology (Politechnika Warszawska) P-POD 3 carried UNICubeSat-GG, from U Roma La Sapienza, which has a gravity gradient experiment

The Vega booster took off from the Ensemble de Lancement Vega (ELV) at Kourou and headed northeast The Zefiro 9A third stage burnt out at 1005 UTC and entered a marginal orbit (one estimate is around -30 x 775 km; another solution from the limited data available is around 50-60 km x 250-500 km; I asked ESA but they haven't responded yet) The stage probably reentered at first perigee at around 1112 UTC south of New Zealand, and has not been cataloged The AVUM stage first burn was completed at 1008 UTC and probably reached an orbit of around 180 x 1450 km (ESA have not annouced the details of the ascent trajectory) At 1048 UTC the AVUM second burn began and resulted in a 1435 x 1452 km x 69 5 deg orbit; LARES was released into this orbit at 1055 UTC At 1106-1110 UTC AVUM's third burn lowered the perigee resulting in an orbit of around 310 x 1441 km At 1110 UTC the three P-PODs released their cargo Finally at 1111 UTC AlmaSat was ejected, and the AVUM vented its remaining propellant, ending up in a 272 x 1431 km x 69 5 km orbit

SES-4

The SES-4 satellite was launched on Feb 14 aboard an ILS Proton from Baykonur The 6180 kg Loral-1300 spacecraft will replace NSS 7 at 22 West The satellite is owned by SES Satellite Leasing (UK) and will be transferred to SES World Skies (based in the Hague) once in its target orbit The Briz-M stage reached a 3640 x 35762 km x 24 5 deg orbit; by Feb 17 SES-4 was in an 8946 x 35759 km x 13 4 deg

Suborbital launches

Armadillo Aerospace launched its LOX/ethanol STIG-A rocket from New Mexico's Spaceport America on Jan 28, reaching the edge of space at 82 km

The Swedish SSC agency's MASER 12 microgravity payload made a suborbital flight from the ESRANGE site at Kiruna, Sweden, using a Brazilian VSB-30 rocket launched from the old Skylark launch tower first used in 1968

Table of Recent (orbital) Launches

Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL
DES Jan 9 0317 ZY-3 ) Chang Zheng 4B Taiyuan Imaging 01A Vesselsat 2 ) Comms 01B Jan 13 0056 FY-2(07) Chang Zheng 3A Xichang Weather 02A Jan 20 0038 WGS 4 Delta 4M+(5,4) Canaveral SLC37B Comms 03A Jan 24 2318 Chibis-M - PM-13M, LEO Science 62C Jan 25 2306 Progress M-14M Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 04A Feb 3 0004? Navid Safir Semnan Imaging 05A Feb 13 1000 LARES ) Vega Kourou ELV Geodesy 06A Almasat ) Tech 06B XaTcobeo ) Tech 06 ROBUSTA ) Tech 06 e-st@r ) Tech 06 Goliat ) Tech 06 PWSat-1 ) Tech 06 MaSat-1 ) Tech 06 UNICubeSat-GG ) Tech 06 LARES Support Sys) Tech 06K Feb 14 1936 SES-4 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC200/39 Comms 07A

Table of Recent (suborbital) Launches

Date UT Payload/Flt Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission Apogee/km

Jan 11 1325 NASA 12 074GT Terrier Malemute Wallops Test 500? Jan 12 1451 S-520-26 S-520 Uchinoura Atm Sci 298 Jan 28 1815 STIG-A-III STIG-A Spaceport America Test 82 Feb 10 0440 Target Prithvi Chandipur Target 100 Feb 13 0932 MASER 12 VSB-30 ESRANGE Micrograv 260

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