Jonathan's Space Report

No 802 2022 Jan 18 Somerville, MA

Note

Welcome to the 33rd anniversary issue of JSR!

International Space Station

Expedition 66 continues

On Jan 7 the Dextre arm moved the STP-H8 experiment payload from the Dragon CRS-24 trunk to the EFU2 location on the Kibo Exposed Facility The previous occupant of EFU2 was the defunct ISS-CREAM experiment, which was moved to EFU7 on Dec 6

On Jan 10 the European ASIM (Atmosphere Space Interactions Monitor) external payload was moved by Canadarm-2 from the SDX to the SDN attach point on the Columbus module, to make room for STP-H7 On Jan 11 STP-H7 was removed from the CRS-24 trunk and installed on SDX

On Jan 12 at 1824 UTC the Progress MS-18 cargo ship fired its engines for 395 seconds for a 0 7m/s delta-V to raise the ISS orbit by 1 5 km to 414 x 423 km x 51 6 deg

Chinese Space Station - redockings of Tianzhou-2

On Jan 3, the Tianhe module's robot arm was walked to a base point near the Tianhe forward docking hub

On Jan 5 the Tianzhou-2 cargo ship undocked from the Tianhe forward port at 2212 UTC and remained stationkeeping close to the port The robot arm then grappled the ship and maneuvered it around, then returned it to the original capture position and released it Tianzhou-2 then redocked with the forward port at 2259 UTC

On Jan 7 the crew of the CSS carried out a manually teleoperated undocking and redocking of the Tianzhou-2 cargo ship Tianzhou-2 undocked from the Tianhe forward port around 2200 UTC, backed it off about 200 m, and redocked it with the same port on Tianhe at 2355 UTC

Chinese Space Station - Starlink encounters

China has complained to the UN (in UN document A/AC 105/1262) that Starlink sats are buzzing the Chinese Space Station (CSS) Two incidents are mentioned, and analysis of the TLEs confirms that the close passes in question did indeed occur as described

On Jul 1 at 0950 UTC the CMSEO (zhongguo zairen hangtian gongcheng bangonghsi, China Human Spaceflight Engineering Office) commanded the CSS to make an orbit adjustment to dodge Starlink 1095, which was in the process of lowering its orbit towards disposal; a close (km or less) pass would otherwise have happened at about 1315 UTC It appears that the Starlink also made a small avoidance burn around the same time, but it sounds like there was no advance communication between SpaceX and the CMSEO about the pass

On Oct 21 the then-recently-launched Starlink-2305 satellite was orbit raising through the altitude of the CSS and was predicted to pass within 1 km of the Chinese station at about 2200 UTC The CSS made an orbit adjustment at about 0316 UTC to avoid the encounter In this case Starlink-2305 does not appear to have made any avoidance burns

Note that when a satellite is in a well tracked and stable (constant) orbit, prediction of upcoming close passes is relatively straighforward But when the orbital elements of the satellites are constantly changing, potentially unpredictably, as in the case of Starlink satellites changing their orbit with electric propulsion, prediction of such `conjunctions' is not reliably possible SpaceX appears to take the view that other space users should trust them to make avoidance burns and not hit them That may be sufficient for most satellites, but for spacecraft with astronauts on board, a wider berth and more active cooperation might seem reasonable

China says it 'has the honour to refer to article V of the [Outer Space Treaty] which provide that [States] should immediately inform the other [member states] of any phenomena they discover in outer space which could consititute a danger to the life or health of astronauts' In other words, implying that SpaceX is such a phenomenon!

China also 'brings to the attention [of] all States parties to the Outer Space Treaty article VI States bear interational responsibility for national activities whether by governmental agencies or by non-governmetnal entities ' In other words, what SpaceX is doing is the responsibility of the US government

One should note that the ISS has had to do dodge Chinese space debris several times over the years, so no-one is pure here However, I am encouraged that China is raising the profile of this issue at the UN - there's been a lot of informal discussion and sniping in the press, but it's very unusual to have a formal document presented to the UN by one country complaining about another country's space activities Taking it seriously would provide an opportunity not only to have action on this issue, but also to bring China itself into better compliance with international norms (on upper stage disposal, for example)

Tianhui-4

China's SAST launched a CZ-2D on Dec 29 with the Tianhui-4 mapping satellite The launch report mentions a test of a dual satellite adapter, but it wasn't made clear if there were actually two Tianhui-4s aboard Two objects were cataloged; object A manuevered to synchronize its orbit 200 km from object B on Jan 5, suggesting that both are payloads A gravity mapping application like the GRACE mission is one possible interpretation

Unlike earlier Tianhui sats which were sun-sync, the Dec 29 launch went to an inclination of 89 degrees

The Tianhui series naming is rather confusing:

Transliteration Explanation Launch date

Tianhui 1 hao 01 xing Tianhui type 1 sat 1 2010 Aug 24 Tianhui 1 hao 02 xing Tianhui type 1 sat 2 2012 May 6 Tianhui 1 hao 03 xing Tianhui type 1 sat 3 2015 Oct 26 Tianhui 1 hao 04 xing Tianhui type 1 sat 4 2021 Jul 29 Tianhui 2 hao 01 zu 01 xing Tianhui type 2 group 1 sat 1 2019 Apr 29 Tianhui 2 hao 01 zu 02 xing Tianhui type 2 group 1 sat 2 2019 Apr 29 Tianhui 2 hao 02 zu 01 xing Tianhui type 2 group 2 sat 1 2021 Aug 18 Tianhui 2 hao 02 zu 02 xing Tianhui type 2 group 2 sat 2 2021 Aug 18 Tianhui-4 Tianhui 4 2021 Dec 29

TJS 9

China's CALT launched at CZ-3B on Dec 29 with the Tongxing Jishu Shiyan 9 experimental communications satellite It was reported to be for multi-band, high speed communications experiments, but may be a Qianshao-3 signals intelligence satellite The satellite had reached a GEO position of 137 2E by Jan 7

Simorgh

Iran launched a Simorgh rocket from Khomeini Space Center at 0330 UTC Dec 30 Iranian news agencies reported that the rocket released multiple payloads at an altitude of 470 km and a velocity of 7 350 km/s They did not claim that orbit was reached, but did not specify if the cited velocity was inertial or Earth-relative It seems unlikely that a deliberate suborbital test would get so close to orbital velocity - for the cited conditions, assumed inertial, that's only about 200 m/s short of successfully reaching orbit I am therefore logging this as an orbital launch failure and assigning it designation 2021-F11

However, I have decided that the evidence for the alleged Jun 23 Simorgh failure, which I assigned designation 2021-F04, is too skimpy, and I have removed it from the General Catalog

My reconstruction of the Dec 30 launch suggests that the payloads and upper stage may have reentered south of Australia about 28 minutes after launch

Starlink

49 Starlink satellites, Group 4-5, were launched on Jan 6 The Falcon 9 flew on a new trajectory southeast from Kennedy Space Center

Transporter-3

On Jan 13 SpaceX launched the Transporter-3 mission from Cape Canaveral Attached to the Falcon 9 second stage was a dispenser column consisting of three ESPA rings, carrying over 100 payloads After the payloads were deployed into a 1000 LTDN sun-sync orbit, the second stage was deorbited The payloads included a number of PocketQubes, the next step down in size from Cubesats; a 1P cubesat is a 0 05m cube with a mass of about 0 2 kg

Transporter-3's payloads include: ION SCV-4, D-Orbit (Italy) 150 kg space tug carrying further sats to be deployed later: Two 3U imaging sats: STORK-1/2 for SatRevolution (Poland)
3U Labsat tech/hosted payload sat for SatRevolution (Poland) 3U VZLUSAT-2 with tech and astronomy instrumentation tests for VZLU (Czechia) 3U cubesat with technology payloads: Dodona-La Jument for U Southern Calif/Lockheed Martin

The Sich-2-1 170 kg remote sensing microsat for NKAU, the Ukrainian space agency Capella 7 and 8, 110 kg radar satellites for Capella Space Umbra-02, a 65 kg radar sat for Umbra Space ICEYE X-14/X-16, two radar sats for ICEYE (Finland)

Alba Orbital's AlbaPod deployers with: Four 3P Unicorn-2 PocketQubes for Alba Orbital (Scotland) for low light level (night) imaging Unicorn-2TA1, PocketQube for Alba Orbital One 2P Unicorn-1 PocketQube for Alba Orbital (Scotland) with an ADS-B comms payload Delfi-PQ (3P) amateur radio comm protocol test fro Delft U (Netherlands) EASAT-2 and Hades, 1 5P amateur radio sats for AMSAT-EA (Spain) Grizu-263A, 1P for ZBEU (Turkey), test sat Pion-BR1, 1P for PionLabs (Brazil), with amateur radio payload SATTLA-2A/B, 2P PocketQubes for Ariel U (Israel) with video transmission crosslink tests MDQube-SAT1, 2P for InnoSpace, IoT comms

FossaPods from FossaSat with: Two 2P PocketQubes from FossaSat (Spain) (FossSat-2E5, 2E6) for IoT comms LAIKA, 2P PocketQube from FossaSat (Spain) for propulsion test using vacuum arc thrusters from the annoyingly-spelled Stockholm startup `porkchop' Two 2P PocketQubes for WiseKey (Switzerland) with crypto comms payloads (WiseSat-1,2) Pilot-1, 2P for CShark (Italy), IoT comms Challenger (3P) test satellite for Intuidex (US) SanoSat-1, 1P for Orion Space (Nepal), with UHF amateur payload

Exolaunch EXOPODs with: 6U imaging cubesats: ETV-A1 for Sen (UK), HYPSO-1 for NTNU (Norway) 6U radio spectrum monitoring sat: BRO-5 for Unseen Labs (France) 3U IoT satellites: DEWASAT-1 for DEWA (Dubai Electricity and Water Authority) and NuX-1 for NuSpace (Singapore) 1U Gossamer Piccolomini test satellite for Lunasonde (US)

ISILaunch Quadpacks with: 44 3U Flock-4x imaging cubesats for Planet 6U imaging sat OroraTech 1 for OroraTech (Munich) Two 3U AIS/GNSS-RO Lemur sats for Spire 6U IoT data relay sats: Kepler 16,17,18,19 for Kepler Comms (Toronto); and Lemur-2 Djirang and Lemur-2 Miriwari probably for Myriota (Australia) Tevel-1 to Tevel-8, eight 1U amateur radio satellites for Herzliya Science Center (Israel) Three 2U AIS maritime domain awareness satellites (MDASat-1a to 1c) for CPU (South Africa) 2U IRIS-A IoT demo satellite for National Cheng Kung U (Taiwan)

LauncherOne

On Jan 13 Virgin Orbit's 747 Cosmic Girl took off from Mojave at 2139 UTC and flew out over the Pacific At 2252 UTC over 120 78W 32 34N it dropped LauncherOne R5, whose first stage ignited about 4 seconds later The rocket flew southeast to enter a parking orbit at the first cutoff of the second\ stage, at 2301 UTC, of 194 x 524 km x 45 deg A second upper stage burn at 2346 UTC circularized the orbit at apogee and the seven payloads were deployed: STORK-3, a 3U imaging satellite for the Polish company SatRevolution SteamSat-2, a 3U satellite built by SatRevolution for SteamJet (UK) which will test a water thruster ADLER-1, for the Osterreichisches Weltraum Forum, a 3U satellite built by Spire which will study microscopic space debris GEARRS-3, for Near Space Launch (Indiana) and the AF Research Lab, a 3U satellite to test a system to relay spacecraft health data via Globalstar satellites TechEdSat-13, a (probably 3U?) satellite from NASA-Ames to test an exobrake reentry system PAN A and B, two 3U Cornell-developed satellites to test out cubesat rendezvous and docking

Shiyan 13

The first Chinese launch of the year put Shiyan 13 in a 1300 km apogee elliptical orbit

DSCOVR upper stage

The inert Falcon 9 upper stage from the 2015 DSCOVR launch made a 9300 km (untargeted, obviously) flyby of the Moon on Jan 5, which left it in a lower perigee orbit of 28583 x 554291 km x 26 9 deg; further lunisolar perturbations mean that it may reenter soon Thanks to Bill Gray for analysis

Angara

As reported in the last JSR, the third Angara A5 test flight on Dec 27 placed Energiya's 14S48 Persei (modified Blok DM-03) upper stage in orbit The Novosti Kosmonavtiki forum reported that the Persei upper stage failed to restart after its first burn, and so was stranded in low parking orbit Space Force tracking showed an orbit of 179 x 201 km The vehicle probably had an initial mass in orbit of around 20 tonnes, but with likely venting of the liquid propellant would have been more like 4 tonnes at the time of reentry at 2108 UTC Jan 5 over the Pacifc at 121W 14S Three additional debris objects of unknown nature were also cataloged and have also reentered

Webb

As of Jan 9, Webb's sunshade and secondary mirror were successfully deployed and the two side primary mirror wings had unfolded Webb continues its coast to Sun-Earth L2 as adjustment of the mirror element positions begins

Erratum:

Dragon CRS-24 docked to the IDA-3 docking port, not IDA-2

Table of Recent Orbital Launches

Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL Catalog Perigee Apogee Incl Notes Dec 2 2312 Starlink 3113 ) Falcon 9 Canaveral SLC40 Comms 115A- 424 x 440 x 53 2 Starlink 3143 )
Starlink 3148 )
Starlink 3155 )
Starlink 3190-3204 )
Starlink 3206-3210 )
Starlink 3218-3219 )
Starlink 3225-3229 )
Starlink 3231 )
Starlink 3233 )
Starlink 3236-3242 )
Starlink 3244 )
Starlink 3246-3252 )
Black Sky Global 12) Imaging 115BA? S49772? 425 x 442 x 53 2 Black Sky Global 13) Imaging 115BB? S49773? 425 x 442 x 53 2 Dec 5 0019 GalileoSat-27 ) Soyuz-ST-B CSG ELS Nav 116A S49809 23517 x 23574 x 57 1 GalileoSat-28 ) Nav 116B S49810 23498 x 23570 x 57 1 Dec 7 0412 Tianjin Daxue 1 ) Gushenxing 1 Jiuquan Imaging 117 S49812 483 x 501 x 97 4 Lize 1 ) Tech? 117 Baoyun ) Tech? 117 Jin Zijing 5 ) Imaging 117 Jin Zijing 1-03 ) Imaging 117 Dec 7 1019 STPSAT-6 ) Atlas V 551 Canaveral SLC41 Tech 118A S49817 36096 x 36112 x 0 1 LDPE-1 ) Tech 118B S49818 36087 x 36125 x 0 1 Dec 8 0738 Soyuz MS-20 Soyuz-2-1A Baykonur LC31 Spaceship 119A S49922 193 x 220 x 51 6 Dec 9 0002 BlackSky Global 16 Electron Mahia LC1A Imaging 120A S49949 429 x 440 x 42 0 BlackSky Global 17 Imaging 120B S49950 426 x 440 x 42 0 Dec 9 0600 IXPE Falcon 9 Kennedy LC39A X-ray Astron 121A S49954 588 x 603 x 0 2 Dec 10 0011 Shi Jian 6-05A ) Chang Zheng 4B Jiuquan Sigint 122B S49962 456 x 470 x 97 4 Shi Jian 6-05B ) Sigint 122A S49961 454 x 469 x 97 4 Dec 13 1207 Ekspress AMU3) Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC200 Comms 123A S50001 16325 x 52810 x 1 7 Ekspress AMU7) Comms 123B S50002 16335 x 52810 x 1 7 Dec 13 1609 Tian Lian 2-02 Chang Zheng 3B Xichang LC3 Comms 124A S50005 181 x 35825 x 27 0 Dec 15 0200 GeeSat-1A ) Kuaizhou-1A Jiuquan Nav F10 F01615 -6200? x 400? x 51 5? GeeSat-1B ) Nav F10 F01616 -6200? x 400? x 51 5? Dec 18 1241 Starlink 3235 ) Falcon 9 Vandenberg SLC4E Comms 125 Starlink 3245 ) Starlink 3254-3277) Starlink 3279-3289) Starlink 3291-3293) Starlink 3296-3298) Starlink 3301 ) Starlink 3303-3307) Starlink 3309 ) Starlink 3313 ) Starlink 3317 ) Dec 19 0358 Turksat 5B Falcon 9 Canaveral LC40 Comms 126A S50212 208 x 68873 x 27 1 Dec 19? USA ? LDPE-1, high orbit Tech? 118D S50214 35990 x 36117 x 0 1 Dec 21 1007 Dragon CRS-24 Falcon 9 Kennedy LC39A Cargo 127A S50318 212 x 362 x 51,6 Dec 22 1532 Inmarsat 6F1 H-IIA 204 Tanegashima Comms 128A S50319 179 x 64689 x 30 0 Dec 23 1016 Shiyan 12-01) Chang Zheng 7A Wenchang LC201 Tech 129A S50321 191 x 35780 x 19 5 Shiyan 12-02) Tech 129B S50322 178 x 35779 x 19 5 Dec 25 1220 James Webb Space Telescope Ariane 5ECA+ Kourou ELA3 Astron 130A S50463 315 x 1050000 x 4 Dec 26 0311 Zi Yuan 1 02E) Chang Zheng 4C Taiyuan LC9 Imaging 131A S50465? Xi Wang 3 ) Comms 131B S50466? Dec 27 1310 OneWeb SL0389-0407) Soyuz-2-1B/Fregat Baykonur LC31 Comms 132 OneWeb SL0409 ) OneWeb SL0412-0414) OneWeb SL0417-0421) OneWeb SL0424 ) OneWeb SL0426-0427) OneWeb SL0429-0430) OneWeb SL0432 ) OneWeb SL0440 ) OneWeb SL0450 )
Dec 27 1900 IPN-1 Angara A5/Persei Plesetsk LC35 Test 133A S50505 179 x 201 x 63 4 Dec 29 1113 Tianhui-4 01 ) Chang Zheng 2D Jiuquan Imaging 134A S50572 483 x 490 x 89 0 Tianhui-4 02?) Imaging? 134B? S50573 Dec 29 1643 TJS 9 Chang Zheng 3B Xichang LC2 Sigint? 135A S50574 170 x 35824 x 27 1 Dec 30 0330 Test payloads Simorgh Khomeini SC Test F11 F01618 -450? x 470 x 55 0? Jan 6 2149 Starlink 3230 Falcon 9 Kennedy LC39A Comms 01A 209 x 337 x 53 2 Starlink 3232 Starlink 3234 Starlink 3278 Starlink 3290 Starlink 3294-3295 Starlink 3299-3300 Starlink 3302 Starlink 3308 Starlink 3310-3312 Starlink 3314-3316 Starlink 3318-3343 Starlink 3346-3349 Starlink 3353 Starlink 3355 Jan 13 1525 Transporter 3 (105 payloads) Falcon 9 Canaveral LC40 Various 02 520 x 535 x 97 5 Jan 13 2252 GEARRS-3 LauncherOne Cosmic Girl, Mojave Comms 03 S51094 502 x 508 x 45 0 STORK-3 Imaging 03 SteamSat-2 Tech 03 PAN A/B Tech 03 Adler-1 Sci 03 TES-13 Tech 03 Jan 17 0235 Shiyan 13 Chang Zheng 2D Taiyuan ? 04A S51102 357 x 1298 x 98 7

Table of Recent Suborbital Launches

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

Dec 1 0825 C-REX 2 Oriole IV Andoya Atmosphere 631 Norw Sea Dec 6 0807 MAPHEUS 10 IM/IM Kiruna Micrograv 250 ESRANGE Dec 11 1050 RSS First Step New Shepard West Texas Tourist 107 West Texas Dec 17 0630 Huozhong-1 Huayi-1 Jiuquan? Micrograv/bio 250
Dec 18 0536 Agni RV Agni P Kalam Island Test 800? Indian Ocean Jan 9 0500 DXL 4 Black Brant 9 Wallops I X-ray Astron 267 Atlantic

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