Jonathan's Space Report

No 663 2012 Jul 25 Somerville, MA USA

International Space Station

On the ISS, Expedition 32 continues with astronauts Gennadiy Padalka, Sergey Revin, Joseph Acaba, Yuriy Malenchenko, Sunita Willams and Akihiko Hoshide Soyuz TMA-05M docked with the Rassvet module on Jul 17 at 0451 UTC

Japan's HTV 3 (Kounotori 3) cargo ship was launched on Jul 21 and is scheduled to dock with the ISS on Jul 27 HTV-3's unpressurized Exposed Pallet carries two packages, JAXA's MCE (Multi-mission consolidated equipment / poto kyoju jikken sochi), and NASA-Glenn's SCAN Testbed MCE includes a ionosphere experiment (IMAP), a lightning study sensor (GLIMS), an inflatable membrane experiment (SIMPLE) and REXJ, a robotics experiment SCAN Testbed has S-band, Ka-band and L-band antennas to test out sofware-defined-radio technologies

The HTV-3 pressurized module contains 8 HTV Resupply Racks with station supplies and equipment, including two J-SSOD picosat deployers and the MPEP adapter Later this year, astronauts will attach the J-SSOD packages to the MPEP and then put the MPEP in the Kibo module's small science airlock When the airlock is opened to space, JAXA's JEM-RMS robot arm will grab the MPEP and stick it pointing in the desired direction The J-SSODs will then shoot out their contents, five small satellites The first J-SSOD carries RAIKO, a 2 kg double cubesat from Wakayama University carrying an imager and a deployable 'drag-membrane' to make the satellite reenter more quickly, and WE WISH, an 1 kg IR imaging satellite from Meisei Electric's amateur radio club The second J-SSOD carries three 1 kg single-cubes, F-1 from FPT University in Hanoi, TechEdSat from San Jose State University, and the Niwaka cubesat from Fukuoka Institute of Technology, Kyushu

On Jul 22 at 2026 UTC the Progress M-15M cargo vehicle undocked from Pirs; it was to return to ISS on Jul 24 in a test of the new Kurs-NA rendezvous system At 0123 UTC on Jul 24 the Kurs-NA failed to start up correctly and the rendezvous was postponed, with Progress M-15M flying past the station at a distance of 3 km

Shenzhou 9

Bob Christy and Ted Molczan have tracked down the mystery of the extra object, 38465/2012-032E It seems to be one of the four second stage motor separation covers, which for some reason was jettisoned late

Kanopus launch

On Jul 22, Roskosmos launched a Soyuz-FG/Fregat into polar orbit with a cluster of small satellites

Kanopus-Vulkan-1 and BelKA-2 are Earth imaging satellites built by VNII Elektromekhaniki, the former for Roskosmos and the latter for the Belorussian Academy of Sciences The satellites carry 2-meter-resolution cameras

ExactView-1 (formerly ADS-1B) is a Surrey satellite for the Canadian company ComDev, carrying an AIS (ship tracking) transponder The Automatic Identifcation System picks up VHF 162 MHz transmitters on marine vessels

MKA-PN1 is a Russian magnetospheric research mission led by IKI (Inst for Space Research) using the Karat bus and the Zond-PP L-band microwave radiometer to study soil moisture and ocean salinity

TET-1 (TechnologieErprobungs-Trager) is a German technology satellite built by Kayser-Threde and TUB, carrying experimental solar cells, electronics, a test picosat propulsion system, and an infrared camera

The Soyuz-FG third stage was tracked in a 160 x 171 km x 95 5 deg parking orbit; Kanopus, BelKA and TET-1 are in 505 x 510 km x 97 5 deg orbits; ExactView and MKA are in 805 x 821 km x 99 0 deg orbits, and the Fregat stage (S/N 1019) entered a 40 x 810 km orbit before its reentry

Tianlian

China's third tracking and data relay satellite was launched on Jul 25 Tianlian yihao 03 xing (Tianlian-1 Satellite 03) flew to a 199 x 42513 km x 18 1 deg geostationary transfer orbit on a CZ-3C rocket

Landsat Anniversary

In late July we had a number of well-known astronautical anniversaries - Jul 20 saw the 43rd anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing and the 36th anniversary of the Viking 1 Mars landing GSFC's Michelle Thaller reminds me that a less well-known date came on Jul 23 with the 40th anniversary of the first Landsat launch, marking the beginning of civilian high(ish) resolution Earth imaging

US civilian Earth imaging programs were developed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland (with the exception of some hand-held camera imaging on human spaceflight missions) The Vanguard 2 photocells in 1959 were followed by the Tiros weather satellites in 1960, returning weather imaging with a few km spatial resolution Tiros was the operational weather satellite system; NASA-Goddard's Nimbus satellites, built by General Electric/Valley Forge, were the research-and-development system testing out advanced sensors (Nimbus 3 had 1 6km visible resolution and multiple infrared channels) Meanwhile, secret NRO satellites were returing imagery with sub-meter resolution

A drive in the late 1960s towards practical applications of space technology and an increased awareness of ecological issues led to the first moderately-high resolution civilian imaging program, the Earth Resources Technology Satellite ERTS was based on GE's Nimbus satellite bus ERTS 1's three-channel vidicon camera and 4-channel visible/near-IR multispectral scanner had a resolution of 80 meters It was the first civilian imaging satellite to be targeted on ground features - crop monitoring, geological surveys, mapping - rather than meteorology Following the launch of ERTS 2 in 1975, ERTS was renamed Landsat Landsat 4 and 5 switched to the multi-mission bus also used for Solar Max and EUVE; Landsat 6 and 7 used a derivative of the Tiros-N bus used for NOAA and USAF polar weather satellites

Unsuccessful attempts to commercialize Landsat in the 1990s led first to the system's transfer to the NOAA weather bureau (in 1983) and then to the formation of EOSAT (later Space Imaging), which took over operations of Landsat 4 and Landsat 5 in 1985 (ownership remained with NOAA until 1998, when the US Geological Survey took over) In 2001 these satellites were returned to USGS while Landsat 7, with 15-meter resolution, was developed by GSFC and turned over to USGS for operations The Landsat Data Continuity Mission is scheduled for launch in early 2013

ERTS/Landsat satellites

Prelaunch Postlaunch Type Mass/kg Launch date End of life date Name Name ERTS A ERTS 1 Nimbus 891 1972 Jul 23 1978 Jan 26 ERTS B Landsat 2 Nimbus 953 1975 Jan 22 1983 Jul 27 Landsat C Landsat 3 Nimbus 900 1978 Mar 5 1983 Sep 7 Landsat D Landsat 4 MMS 1938 1982 Jul 16 2001 Jun 15 Landsat D' Landsat 5 MMS 1938 1984 Mar 1 - Landsat 6 Landsat 6 Tiros-N 1866 1993 Oct 5 1993 Oct 5 (launch failure) Landsat 7 Landsat 7 Tiros-N 2101 1999 Apr 15 - LDCM - Leostar-3 3085 2013 (planned)

2012 Orbital launch summary to date

40 launches: Russia China USA Europe Japan India Iran N Korea 12 10 9 4 2 1 1 1(fail)

Suborbital launches

Some of the subarcsecond solar images from the Hi-C rocket have been released at http://www nasa gov/topics/solarsystem/features/hic html

NASA-Langley's IRVE-3 mission (NASA flight 39 011NR) tested an inflatable reentry vehicle on a suborbital flight from Wallops Inflatable reentry technology was attempted by the Russian Lavochkin company as early as 2000, with mixed results The 426 kg IRVE-3 payload deployed a 3-meter conical inflatable heat shield and successfully reentered, but attempts to locate the payload after splashdown in the Atlantic were not successful The IRVE reentry conditions are less extreme than the IRDT flights (and they always quote Mach number at some unspecified altitude so I'm not sure of the velocity numbers I quote here)

Inflatable reentry missions: Mission Launcher Date Location Velocity Result

IRDT Soyuz-Fregat 2000 Feb 9 LEO to Kazakhstan 5 6 km/s Success Fregat-IRDT Soyuz-Fregat 2000 Feb 9 LEO to Kazakhstan 5 6 km/s Vehicle lost IRDT-2 Volna 2002 Jul 12 Barents Sea to Kamchatka 7 3 km/s Vehicle lost IRDT-2R Volna 2005 Oct 6 Barents Sea to Kamchatka 6 9 km/s Vehicle lost IRVE-1 Terrier Orion 2007 Sep 6 Wallops to Atlantic 1 3 km/s? No payload sep IRVE-2 Black Brant 9 2009 Aug 17 Wallops to Atlantic 1 7 km/s? Success (recovery not attempted) IRVE-3 Black Brant11 2012 Jul 23 Wallops to Atlantic 2 7 km/s? Success (no recovery)

The Degradation Free Spectrometers mission, NASA 36 263US, flew new extreme ultraviolet spectrometers to study the solar output The DFS instruments, intended for future solar satellites, will be able to return accurate absolute measurements over many years The flight also carried a copy of the SOHO SEM instrument, which has been in space since 1995, to see how much the original instrument on SOHO has degraded The mission is led by Darrell Judge of the University of Southern California

Table of Recent (orbital) Launches

Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL
DES Jun 1 0523 Intelsat IS-19 Zenit-3SL Odyssey, Pacific Comms 30A Jun 13 1600 NuStar Pegasus XL L-1011,Kwajalein Astronomy 31A Jun 16 1037 Shenzhou 9 Chang Zheng 2F Jiuquan Spaceship 32A Jun 20 1228 USA 236 (NROL-38) Atlas 5 401 Canaveral SLC41 Comms? 33A Jun 29 1315 USA 237 (NROL-15) Delta 4H Canaveral SLC37B Sigint? 34A Jul 5 2136 Echostar 17 ) Ariane 5ECA Kourou ELA3 Comms 35A Meteosat 10 ) Weather 35B Jul 9 1838 SES-5 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC81/24 Comms 36A Jul 15 0240 Soyuz TMA-05M Soyuz-FG Baykonur LC1/5 Spaceship 37A Jul 21 0206 Kounotori 3 H-IIB Tanegashima LP2 Cargo 38A Jul 22 0641 Kanopus-V ) Imaging 39 BelKA-2 ) Soyuz-FG/Fregat Baykonur LC31/6 Imaging 39 TET-1 ) Tech 39 exactView-1) Comms/AIS 39 MKA-PN1 ) Science 39 Jul 25 1543 Tianlian-1 (03) Chang Zheng 3C Xichang Comms 40A

Table of Recent (suborbital) Launches

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

Jun 7 1739 RV Topol' Kapustin Yar Op Test 1000? Jun 21 1040 NASA 41 101UO Terrier Orion Wallops I Education 117 Jun 22 1918 SHEFEX II VS-40 Andoya Hypersonic 177 Jun 23 1930 NASA 36 286UE Black Brant 9 White Sands Solar 300? Jun 27 0915 FTM-18 Target Castor 4B? Kauai Target 100? Jun 27 0920? FTM-18 KV SM-3 Block IB USS Lake Erie Intercept 100? Jul 3 Shahab RV Shahab 1 ?, Iran Exercise 100? Jul 3 Shahab RV Shahab 2 ?, Iran Exercise 100? Jul 3 Shahab RV Shahab 3 ?, Iran Exercise 150? Jul 5 1850 NASA 36 284NS Black Brant 9 White Sands Solar 275? Jul 11 1850 NASA 36 272NS Black Brant 9 White Sands Solar 268 Jul 23 1101 NASA 39 011NR Black Brant 11 Wallops Reentry test 458 Jul 24 1917 NASA 36 263US Black Brant 9 White Sands Solar 324

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