Jonathan's Space Report

No 705 2014 Nov 14 Somerville, MA

International Space Station

Expedition 41 commander Max Suraev and flight engineers FE-5 Reid Wiseman and FE-6 Alex Gerst returned to Soyuz TMA-13M on Nov 9 FE-3 Barry 'Butch' Wilmore then became ISS commander of Expedition 42, staying on the station with FE-1 Aleksandr Samokutyaev and FE-2 Elena Serova

Soyuz TMA-13M undocked from Rassvet at 0031 UTC Nov 10 The deorbit burn at 0305 UTC reduced velocity by 128 m/s, dipping perigee into the atmosphere Landing in Kazakhstan came at 0358:35 UTC

Rosetta and Philae

The 85 kg Philae lander was ejected from the Rosetta probe 22 km from Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at 0835 UTC Nov 12 Philae's thruster was not working, and at 1533 UTC on contact with 67P's surface at the Agilkia landing site the harpoons intended to lock it to the surface apparently did not deploy The lander bounced off the surface gently and settled down in another location at 1726 UTC, for a second briefer bounce that resulted in final touchdown at 1733 UTC, with the lander tilted, with one of its three legs off the surface The lander is in the shadow of a crater cliff and not receiving enough sunlight to recharge its 2 5-day-life batteries Science data is being received, but at the moment it looks like a race against time However, the situation is evolving rapidly

Comet missions
--------------

Spacecraft           Comet              Closest Approach, Date         Notes
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
ISEE-3               21P/Giacobini-Zinner    7870 km   1985 Sep 11     Flyby
Vega-1               1P/Halley               8900 km   1986 Mar  6     Flyby
Suisei               1P/Halley             151000 km   1986 Mar  8     Flyby
Vega-2               1P/Halley               8030 km   1986 Mar  9     Flyby
Giotto               1P/Halley                596 km   1986 Mar 13     Flyby, imaging
Giotto               26P/Grigg-Skjellerup     200 km   1992 Jul 10     Flyby
Sakigake        45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova 10000 km?  1996 Feb 11?    Flyby, no data?
Deep Space 1         19P/Borrelly            2171 km   2001 Sep 22     Flyby
Contour        (   2P/Encke                           (2002 Aug)       Probe failed
               (  73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3                       (blew up departing Earth)
               (   6P/d'Arrest
Stardust             81P/Wild 2               250 km   2004 Jan  2     Dust collection
Deep Impact          9P/Tempel 1                0 km   2005 Jul  4     Impact
DI Flyby Probe       9P/Tempel 1              500?km   2005 Jul  4     Flyby,imaging
DI Flyby Probe       103P/Hartley 2           700 km   2010 Nov  4     Flyby,imaging
Rosetta           67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko    10 km   2014 Oct        Orbiter
Philae            67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko     0 km   2014 Nov 12     Lander

Chinese lunar probe

The Chang'e-5 Flight Test Vehicle (Chang'e wu hao feixing shiyan qi), also called the Reentry Return Flight Test Mission (Zai ru Fanhui Feixing Shiyan Renwu), passed around 11300 km from the Moon on Oct 27 and returned to Earth on Oct 31 The descent capsule separated from the main vehicle at 2153 UTC and landed north of Hohhot at 2242 UTC The service module (fuwu cang) made a burn at 2156 UTC to avoid reentry and swung past the Earth to head out towards the Earth-Moon L2 point

The orbital analysis mentioned in JSR704 was the work of Cees Bassa

Kosmos-2499

The Kosmos-2499 satellite launched in May continues manuevering in orbit On Oct 28 at about 1035 UTC the satellite raised its orbit from 927 x 1485 km to 1054 x 1493 km Then on Nov 9 at about 0540 UTC it made a final burn to complete its rendezvous with the Briz rocket stage that launched it, in an 1151 x 1502 km orbit

ASNARO

The Japanese ASNARO high resolution imaging satellite was placed in orbit by a Dnepr rocket launched from the Dombarovskiy/Yasniy missile base in Russia on Nov 6 The satellite was developed by NEC and is managed by Japan Space Systems (formerly USEF, part of the Ministry of Trade and Industry) rather than by the main Japanese space agency JAXA The 495 kg ASNARO has 0 5m resolution on a 10 km nadir swath width and is in a 505 x 506 km x 97 5 deg sun-synchronous orbit with a 1057 local time descending node (LTDN)

Four small (50 kg) Japanese satellites were also carried: Tsubame, Hodoyoshi-1, Kinshachi-1 and Tsukushi Tsubame ('Swallow') is an astronomy satellite from the Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo kogyo daigaku) and carries a hard X-ray polarimeter to study the polarization of gamma ray bursts Hodoyoshi-1, from the University of Tokyo and AXELSPACE, carries an imager with 6 8m resolution and 28 km swath Kinshachi-1, also known as ChubuSat-1, is a project of Nagoya and Daido universities (The name Kinschachi refers to the golden sea-monster statues on Nagoya castle; Nagoya and Daido are in the Chubu region of Japan) It carries a 10m res, 14 km swath imager, a 130m res, 7-13 micron infrared camera reported to be for atmosphere temperature profiles and space debris monitoring and an amateur radio relay payload The Tsukushi ('Horsetail'; also an old name for the Kyushu region) payload is also called QSAT-EOS: Kyushu Satellite for Earth Observation System Demonstration The sastellite carries a CMOS camera with 4m res and 7 km swath, a magnetometer and an in-situ space debris detector, as well as a deployable 3-meter kapton sail used as a drag augmentation device

The Dnepr rocket deposits its payloads while still gaining velocity, resulting in slightly different orbits: 70G GDS nosecone 478 x 507 km (Platform A attached?) 70A ASNARO 505 x 506 km x 97 5 deg 70B Hodoyoshi-1 506 x 524 km x 97 5 70C Kinshachi-1 506 x 537 km x 97 5 70D Tsukushi 506 x 553 km x 97 5 70E Tsubame 505 x 568 km x 97 5 70F Third stage 485 x 1942 km

Erratum: JSR 704 should have been dated Oct 30 Oops

Table of Recent (orbital) Launches

Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL

Oct 7 0516 Himawari-8 H-IIA Tanegashima Weather 60A Oct 15 2002 IRNSS-1C PSLV-XL Sriharikota FLP Navigation 61A Oct 16 2144 Intelsat IS-30 ) Ariane 5ECA Kourou ELA3 Comms 62A ARSAT-1 ) Comms 62B Oct 20 0631 Yaogan 21 Chang Zheng 4C Taiyuan Imaging? 63A Oct 21 1509 Ekspress AM-6 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC81/24 Comms 64A Oct 23 1800 CE-5 FTD ) Chang Zheng 3C/G2 Xichang Lunar probe 65A 4M ) Amateur radio 65B Oct 27 0659 SJ-11 08 Chang Zheng 2C Jiuquan Surveillance? 66A Oct 28 2220 Cygnus ORB-3 ) Antares 130 Wallops MARS 0A Cargo F02 RACE ) Science F02 Arkyd-3 ) Tech F02 GOMX-2 ) Comms AIS F02 Flock-1d 1 to 26 ) Imaging F02 Oct 29 0709 Progress M-25M Soyuz-2-1a Baykonur LC31 Cargo 67A Oct 29 1721 GPS SVN 69 Atlas V 401 Canaveral SLC41 Navigation 68A Oct 30 0143 Meridian No 17L Soyuz-2-1a/Fregat Plesetsk LC43/4 Comms 69A Nov 6 0735 ASNARO ) Dnepr Yasniy Imaging 70A Hodoyoshi-1 ) Imaging 70B Kinshachi-1 ) Imaging 70C Tsukushi ) Imaging 70D Tsubame ) XR Astron 70E

Suborbital missions

Russia launched a Bulava missile from the Yuri Dolgorukiy submarine in the Barents Sea on Oct 29; multiple reentry vehicles flew a suborbital trajectory to the Kura target range in Kamchatka

I don't normally cover rocket flights within the Earth's atmosphere, but the Oct 31 Spaceship Two accident is noteworthy - as well as tragic Spaceship Two S/N 01 'VSS Enterprise' was a rocket-powered glider dropped from the White Knight 2 carrier aircraft, based at Mojave Spaceport in California, and was intended for passenger suborbital flights to be operated by Virgin Galactic The vehicle had made 12 captive flights, 32 glide flights, and 3 rocket-powered flights prior to the accident The glide flights had been piloted by a mixture of Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic test pilots, but the powered flight tests were mostly led by the Scaled Composites team (one flight was piloted by Virgin Galactic test pilot D Mackay) Only short rocket burns had been made and the highest apogee was only 22 km On Oct 31, flight PF04 made a short rocket burn of 9 seconds, at which point the co-pilot unlocked the rotating tail booms, apparently by mistake; these were not intended to be deployed at the then speed of around Mach 1 0 during rocket-powered flight The unlocked booms then accidentally deployed ('feathered'), followed by disintegration of the vehicle The debris fell near Koehn Lake in California, about 40 km NE of the takeoff airport at Mojave Pilot Pete Siebold parachuted to safety and was hospitalized with serious injuries, but is now recovering at home; co-pilot Mike Alsbury was killed in the crash The second SS Two, S/N 02 'VSS Voyager', is under construction at Mojave

The flights were: Date Apogee Burn time(s) Pilots km s PF01 2013 Apr 29 1447UTC 17 16 Mark Stucky, Mike Alsbury PF02 2013 Sep 5 1611UTC 22 20 Mark Stucky, Clint Nichols PF03 2014 Jan 10 1600UTC? 21 20 David Mackay (VG), Mark Stucky PF04 2014 Oct 31 1709UTC 16? 9? Pete Siebold, Mike Alsbury

Table of Recent (suborbital) Launches

NASA 36 253US RAISE-2 was launched on Nov 6 to obtain time-resolved UV spectra of solar active regions

The FTM-25 missile defense test used an ARAV short range target with a separating dummy warhead; probably an ARAV-B Terrier Oriole vehicle was used, or maybe an ARAV-A Terrier Orion

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

Oct 7 1310 SR-10 Sounding Rocket Jiupeng Ionosphere 286 Oct 12 0427 MDA Target? Terrier Lynx Wallops I Target? 150? Oct 17 0708 FTX-20 MRBM-T3? Kauai Target 300? Oct 23 1333 SL-9 SpaceLoft XL Spaceport America Micrograv 124 Oct 29 1727 RVs Bulava K-535, Barents Sea Test 1000? Nov 1 0620 RV Topol'-M Plesetsk Test 1000? Nov 5 RV Sineva K-114, Barents Sea Test 1000? Nov 6 1907 RAISE 2 Black Brant IX White Sands Solar 300? Nov 6 2203 FTM-25 Target Terrier Oriole? Kauai Target 150? Nov 6 2206? Aegis KV SM-3-IB DDG-53, Pacific Interceptor 150?

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