Jonathan's Space Report
No. 616 2009 Sep 30 Somerville, MA
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Shuttle and Station
--------------------

The Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle, HTV-1, was launched on Sep 10
into a 185 x 301 km x 51.6 deg orbit. This was the first launch of
the H-IIB rocket, which has a larger diameter first stage than the
old H-IIA, with two LE-5A main engines instead of one, and
four large SRB-A strapons instead of two.

HTV-1 completed its rendezvous with the Station on Sep 17.
It approached to within 10m of the Harmony module, and the Canadarm-2
grappled it and berthed it to Harmony's nadir port. The
SMILES and HREP experiments were transferred to the Kibo Exposed
Facility on Sep 24.

Discovery landed on runway 22 at Edwards Air Force Base at 0053 UTC on
Sep 12. It flew back to KSC aboard Shuttle Carrier Aircraft NASA 911 on
Sep 20-21. Progress M-67 undocked from the aft Zvezda port at 0725 UTC
on Sep 21. Soyuz TMA-16 is scheduled to launch on Sep 30, carrying
Maksim Suraev, Jeffrey Williams and Guy Laliberte to the Station.


PAN
---

The orbit I gave in the last JSR for the secret PAN communications
satellite was erroneous. Based on information on nasaspaceflight.com and
from Bob Christy, the orbital data were around 176 x 21761 km x 25.4 deg
at MECO-1, 175 x 21622 km just before engine restart, and 7314 x 35400
km x 23.1 deg at spacecraft separation, which occurred about 17400 km
over the Indian Ocean. First transfer orbit apogee was over the equator
at 95E, at around 0420 UTC on Sep 9. On Sep 22, the spacecraft was in
geostationary orbit over 34 deg E according to hobbyist observations.


Meteor-M
--------

The first Meteor-M satellite was launched on Sep 17. Replacing the old
Meteor-3M satellite, the upgraded satellite carries a new generation of weather
instruments for the Russian Hydrometeorological Service and is built
by VNII EM. Several small satellites were deployed on the same launch.
Launch vehicle was the Soyuz-2-1b with a Fregat upper stage.

The following Soyuz-2-1a and -1b transition vehicles have now flown:
1 Soyuz 2-1a 2004 Nov 8 Suborbital test flight
2 Soyuz 2-1a/Fregat 2006 Oct 19 ESA Metop 2
3 Soyuz 2-1a/Fregat 2006 Dec 24 Meridian 1
4 Soyuz 2-1b/Fregat 2006 Dec 27 CNES COROT
5 Soyuz 2-1b 2008 Jul 26 Persona
6 Soyuz 2-1a/Fregat 2009 May 21 Meridian 2
7 Soyuz 2-1b/Fregat 2009 Sep 17 Meteor-M

The Soyuz-2-1b third stage reached a 185 x 198 km x 98.8 deg orbit at
1604 UTC. The Fregat stage separated and made two burns at around 1606
and 1652 UTC to an 814 x 820 km orbit, where it deployed the 2755 kg
Meteor-M and the small 7 kg Blits satellite at 1653 UTC. Blits, built by
NII Pretsizionnogo Priborostroeniya (NIIPP) of Moscow, is a spherical
glass lens to be used for laser geodesy. At 1745 UTC, three more
satellites were ejected from the adapter truss on Fregat: Sterkh No.
12L, the second dedicated search-and-rescue satellite for the Russian
Space Agency; Universitetskiy/Tat'yana-2, a 90 kg space physics research
satellite built by students at MGU (Moscow State University); and
UGATUSAT, a small 35 kg remote sensing satellite for the Ufimskiy
Gosudarstvenniy Aviatsionniy Tekhnicheskiy Universitet (Ufa State
Aviation Technical University) in Bashkortostan, a Russian autonomous
republic. Fregat then made two further burns at about 1746 and 1835 UTC
to descend to 490 x 504 km where it deployed Sumbandila, a South African
imaging satellite, and deployed the Lavochkin/Astrium IRIS experment,
two rigidizing masts carrying dummy solar arrays, in a test of
inflatable structure technology. The Fregat was expected to make a final
burn to deorbit itself on Sep 18, but was still in a 491 x 503 km orbit
as of Sep 23.


Nimiq 5
-------

Telesat's Nimiq 5 was launched by an ILS/Khrunichev Proton-M
on Sep 17. The 4745 kg Loral-1300 class satellite was deployed
into a 9434 x 35823 km x 13.0 deg orbit. By Sep 22 it was in a 20783 x 35816
km x 4.4 deg orbit.

CARE
----

The Charged Aerosol Release Experiment, CARE I, was launched from
Wallops Island on Sep 19, creating a cloud in the ionosphere that
was widely seen in the nightime sky in the eastern United States.
The rocket was a Black Brant XI (Talos-Terrier-Black Brant)
not a Black Brant XII (Talos-Terrier-Black Brant-Nikha) as had been
widely reported; it therefore got a BB-XI '39'-series flight designation,
NASA 39.009DR, rather that a BB-XII '40'-series number. The rocket
did indeed have a Nikha motor, but not as a fourth stage - the
motor nozzle was removed and the motor was burnt in a test to release its
propellant as a cloud of dusty plasma, studying its effects
on the upper atmosphere. In this role, the motor was counted as part
of the payload and not of the launch vehicle.

Oceansat-2
----------

ISRO, the Indian Space Research Organization, launched Oceansat-2 on Sep
23, a remote sensing satellite with an 8-band ocean color monitor, a
radar scatterometer and a radio occultation atmospheric sounder. It also
deployed four 1 kg Cubesats, and carried two Rubin maritime
communications packages which remain attached to the PSLV final stage.
The Cubesats are Uwe-2 for Julius-Maximilians-Universitat Wurzburg
(Wurzburg, Bayern, Germany); SwissCube for the Ecole Polytechnique
Federale de Lausanne (Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland); BEESAT for the
Technische Universitat Berlin; and ITU piko Satellite (ITU-p-SAT) for
the Istanbul Teknik Universitesi in Istanbul.

Launch vehicle was the PSLV-CA, the 'core-alone' version of the Polar
Satellite Launch Vehicle; it was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space
Centre in Sriharikota.

STSS
----

The STSS (Space Tracking and Surveillance System) Demo launch on Sep 23
placed the two STSS satellites in orbit using a Delta 7920 launch
vehicle. STSS 1 and 2 were designated USA 208 and 209 after launch. The
satellites were built by Northrop Grumman for the US Missile Defense
Agency and will monitor missile flights using infrared sensors. Mass of
the spacecraft is around 1000 kg each and they are in a 1350 x 1350 km x
58 deg orbit.



Table of Recent (orbital) Launches
----------------------------------
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Aug 11 1947 Asiasat 5 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC39/200 Comms 42A
Aug 17 1035 GPS 50 Delta 7925 Canaveral SLC17A Nav 43A
Aug 21 2209 JCSAT 12 ) Ariane 5ECA Kourou ELA3 Comms 44A
Optus D3 ) Comms 44B
Aug 25 0800 STSAT-2 Naro KSLV-1 Naro Tech F03
Aug 29 0400 Discovery STS-128) Space Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 45A
Leonardo )
Aug 31 0928 Palapa D CZ-3B Xichang LC2 Comms 46A
Sep 8 2135 USA 207 (PAN) Atlas V 401 Canaveral SLC41 Comms 47A
Sep 10 1701 HTV H-IIB Tanegashima Y2 Cargo 48A
Sep 17 1555 Meteor-M ) Soyuz-2-1b/Fregat Baykonur LC31 Weather 49A
BLITS ) Geodesy 49G
Tat'yana-2 ) Science 49
Sterkh 12L ) SAR 49
UGATUSAT ) Imaging 49
Sumbandila ) Tech 49F
IRIS ) Tech/Imag. 49C
Sep 17 1919 Nimiq-5 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC39/200 Comms 50A
Sep 23 0621 Oceansat-2 ) PSLV-CA SDSC Imaging 51A
UWE-2 ) Tech 51
BEESAT ) Tech 51
ITU-p-SAT 1 ) Tech 51
SwissCube ) Science 51
Rubin-9.1 ) Comms 51F
Rubin-9.2 ) Comms 51F
Sep 23 1220 STSS 1 ) Delta 7920 Canaveral SLC17 Tracking 52A
STSS 2 ) Tracking 52A

Table of Recent (suborbital) Launches
----------------------------------

Date UT Payload/Flt Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission Apogee/km
Aug 11 0450 NASA 36.229DR Black Brant IX San Nicolas Target 150?
Aug 17 1152 IRVE Support Viper 3A Wallops Weather 90?
Aug 17 1252 NASA 36.254NR Black Brant IX Wallops Reentry test 210
Aug 23 1601 Mk 12 RV? GT195 Minuteman 3 Vandenberg Op. Test 1300?
Sep 14 1740? NASA 36.221DS Black Brant IX White Sands Solar EUV 300?
Sep 19 2346 NASA 39.009DR Black Brant XI Wallops Chem Release 283
Sep 27 Shahab RV Shahab 1 Iran Exercise 100?
Sep 27 Shahab RV Shahab 2 Iran Exercise 100?
Sep 28 Shahab RV Shahab 3 Iran Exercise 500?
Sep 28 Sejjil RV Sejjil Iran Exercise 800?

.-------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 |
| Somerville MA 02143 | inter : jcm@host.planet4589.org |
| USA | jcm@cfa.harvard.edu |