Jonathan's Space Report<br />No. 503 2003 Jun 30, Cambridge, MA<br />-------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br /><br />Shuttle and Station<br />--------------------<br /><br /><br />The Expedition 7 crew, Yuriy Malenchenko and Edward Lu, remain on board<br />the Space Station. The ferry ship Soyuz TMA-2 (spacecraft 7K-STM 212)<br />and two cargo ships, Progress M-47 (spacecraft 7K-TGM 247) and Progress<br />M1-10 (spacecraft 7K-TGM 259) are docked to the Station.<br /><br /><br />Recent Launches<br />---------------<br /><br /><br />Russia has launched an 8K78M Molniya-M rocket from the northern Plesetsk<br />spaceport carrying a Russian government Molniya-3 communications<br />satellite. The Molniya-M rocket is just a Soyuz-U with an extra fourth<br />state. The satellite entered a 211 x 559 km x 62.8 deg parking orbit,<br />and then the Blok ML upper stage fired to put it in a 604 x 40578 km x<br />62.7 deg drift orbit with a 734 minute period; the orbit will later be<br />adjusted to 717.8 minutes (semi-synchronous) with an onboard engine. By<br />Jun 28 it was in a 719.1 minute, 631 x 39789 km x 62.9 deg orbit. The<br />special orbital inclination of i = 63 degrees, ( sin i ) squared =<br />4/5, minimizes the rotation of the orbit in its plane due to the<br />oblateness of the Earth, keeping the apogee in the northern hemisphere.<br /><br /><br />Russian sources have not released the serial number of the payload, but<br />it may possibly be Molniya-3 No. 65. US sources list it as Molniya 3-53<br />because it is the 53rd satellite to be given the Molniya-3 name, but the<br />3-53 designation is not used in official Russian sources. The first<br />Molniya-3 was Molniya-3 No. 11 launched in Nov 1974; satellite series<br />built by NPO Prikladnoi Mekhaniki always start with No. 11 - perhaps<br />Nos. 1-10 are reserved for ground test articles or something. Subsequent<br />satellites were launched somewhat out of production order and No. 14 was<br />never launched, so we can't really guess the correct designation. 54<br />Molniya-3 satellites and one Molniya-3K have now been launched,<br />including two satellites which were stranded in parking orbit and given<br />Kosmos designations.<br /><br /><br />Space Command has redesignated the two parts of Japan's USERS satellite <br />for no very good reason: 2002-42A (27515) is now the SEM, still in orbit<br />(although still listed as decayed in the NASA OIG site, new elements are<br />being issued) and 2002-42H (27815) is now the REM, which landed on May<br />29 (although all the elements associated with it are actually orbital<br />data for the SEM, and are for dates in early June after the REM landed). <br />I think I'm not going to update my own catalog just yet in case they <br />switch back again.<br /><br /><br />Orbimage's Orbview-3 1-meter-resolution commercial imaging satellite was<br />launched on Jun 26 by Orbital Sciences. The L-1011 carrier plane took<br />off from Vandenberg AFB at 1757 UTC and dropped the Pegasus XL rocket at<br />1853 UTC, probably over the standard Pacific drop zone at 36.0N 123.0W.<br />It reached a 366 x 430 km x 97.3 deg orbit at 1901 UTC deploying<br />Orbview-3, which uses an Orbital Leostar bus and has a launch mass of<br />304 kg (probably including of order 50 kg of hydrazine for orbit<br />raising; other sources imply that the 304 kg figure may be the bus only<br />and does not include the 66 kg science instrument). This is the third<br />Pegasus launch this year, following SORCE and GALEX.<br /><br /><br />Table of Recent Launches<br />-----------------------<br /><br /><br />Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.<br /> DES.<br /><br /><br />May 8 1128 GSAT-2 GSLV Sriharikota Comms 18A<br />May 9 0429 Hayabusa M-V Kagoshima Probe 19A<br />May 13 2210 Hellas Sat 2 Atlas V 401 Canaveral SLC41 Comms 20A<br />May 24 1634 Beidou CZ-3A Xichang Navigation 21A<br />Jun 2 1745 Mars Express Soyuz-FG/Fregat Baykonur LC31 Probe 22A<br />Jun 4 1923 Kosmos-2398 Kosmos-3M Plesetsk Navigation 23A<br />Jun 6 2215 AMC-9 Proton-K/Briz-M Baykonur LC200/39 Comms 24A<br />Jun 8 1034 Progress M1-10 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 25A<br />Jun 10 1356 Thuraya 2 Zenit-3SL Odyssey, Pacific Phone comms 26A<br />Jun 10 1758 MER-A Spirit Delta 7925 Canaveral SLC17A Mars probe 27A<br />Jun 11 2238 BSAT-2c ) Ariane 5G Kourou ELA3 Comms 28A<br /> Optus/D C1 ) Comms 28B<br />Jun 19 2000 Molniya-3 Molniya-M Plesetsk LC43/3 Comms 29A<br />Jun 26 1853 Orbview-3 Pegasus XL Vandenberg RW30/12 Imaging 30A<br /><br /><br />.-------------------------------------------------------------------------.<br />| Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 |<br />| Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | |<br /><br /><br />| Astrophysics | |<br />| 60 Garden St, MS6 | |<br />| Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@cfa.harvard.edu |<br />| USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu |<br />| |<br />| JSR: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/jsr.html |<br />| Back issues: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~jcm/space/jsr/back |