Science fiction and science writer Arthur C. Clarke is receiving an unusual birthday present. Clarke, who turned 78 last month, is being nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Although Clarke is probably best known as the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the nomination, authored by National Space Society Director Glenn H. Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, cites Clarke's invention of the geosynchronous communications satellite. Clarke proposed the technology in an October, 1945 article in the magazine Wireless World. The first such satellite was launched less than twenty years later, and they are now commonplace, mainstays of everything from international telephony to CNN. According to Reynolds, this invention has gone a long way toward promoting world peace. In his nominating letter he writes:
I do not believe it to be an exaggeration when I say that the global communications revolution made possible by satellite communications has been the most powerful single force for world peace in the post-World War Two era. Worldwide television reportage, made possible by satellites, has been instrumental in preventing bloodshed on many occasions. It has prompted the dispatch of U.N. peacekeeping forces (themselves Nobel Peace Prize awardees) on many occasions; it has caused combatants to draw back from the brink of hostilities on others; it has produced strong pressures to avoid civilian casualties; and it has discouraged governments from using force against dissident elements in their own civilian populations. It may well have been responsible for the change in consciousness that resulted in the end of the Cold War and the first steps toward freedom in the former Soviet Union.
Clarke has also served as (in the Washington Post's own words) "the philosopher of the Global Village," offering important observations and cautions on topics ranging from the threat to the world's oceans posed by pollution, to the danger to astronauts posed by "space junk." He has also supported numerous humanitarian efforts in his home of Sri Lanka. Will science fiction fans around the globe rally in support of Clarke? "I hope so," says Reynolds. "He deserves it."
After several months of delays due to technical problems and poor weather, a Delta rocket launched NASA's X-Ray Timing Explorer (XTE) spacecraft Saturday, December 30.
The rocket took off from the Kennedy Space Center at 8:48am EST December 30. The rocket successfully delivered the rocket into its proper orbit 580 km (360 mi) above the planet. All systems are reported to be working.
The XTE was scheduled to be launched in August, but problems with the booster's strap-on solid-fuel boosters delayed the launch several months. High winds at the launch site scrubbed several launch attempts in mid-December.
A launch attempt on December 18 was aborted literally at the last second when a fuel valve broke down on the booster.
The spacecraft, which carries experiments from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center as well as the University of California San Diego and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will spend several years studying how cosmic x-ray sources vary over time.
The Galileo spacecraft has overcome a number of serious problems, including a broken high-gain antenna and balky tape recorder. However, one problem exists that NASA's scientists and engineers cannot overcome: the partial federal government shutdown.
The furlough of NASA public relations employees forced officials to cancel a December 19 press conference where scientists were to provide the results from a "first look" at the data from the Galileo probe.
The press conference has not been rescheduled because the shutdown, three weeks long as of press time, has not ended. The conference will not be held until the shutdown ends and the public relations employees return to work.
The Galileo spacecraft arrived at Jupiter on December 7. The probe returned an estimated 57 minutes of data to the main spacecraft, which relayed 40 minutes of that data to Earth by December 14, when the Sun interfered with transmission of the probe data.
The rest of the probe data will be returned when contact is reestablished with Galileo later this month.
The NASA public relations employees are among approximately a quarter-million workers who have been furloughed by the shutdown, the longest in U. S. history. An additional half-million employees are working without pay until the funding situation is resolved.
A new rocket engine which promises to help provide low-cost access to space was successfully tested in New Mexico recently, paving the way for full flight tests.
The Scorpius engine was fired for 200 seconds at a test center in New Mexico November 20. The engine, which provides 5,000 lbs of thrust, uses kerosene and liquid oxygen in a design that has only 18 parts, far fewer than the 15,000 parts found in a typical engine.
Officials with Microcosm, the company that developed the Scorpius, say they plan to use the engine in suborbital sounding rockets as well as its planned Liberty Light-Lift Launch Vehicle. The Liberty booster will carry up to 1,000 kg (2,200 lbs) into low Earth orbit for an estimated $1.7 million.
According to Microcosm president Dr. James Wertz, "The 200 second burn represents a major milestone in low cost launch vehicles. It shows that engines costing less than $1/lb of thrust can have sufficient life to support both sounding rocket and launch vehicle applications."
French officials are planning 13 Ariane launches in 1996, including two Ariane 5 launches, but are having trouble getting the first one off the ground.
Problems with a Malaysian communications satellite have forced a delay in the launch of an Ariane 44L booster, the first launched scheduled for 1996. The launch was scheduled for January 9. A new launch date was not available at press time.
Officials with the French national space agency, CNES, stated that they expected to launch 17 satellites on 13 launches in 1996. In 1995, Ariane boosters delivered 13 satellites on 11 launches.
The Ariane 5 heavy-lift booster has been scheduled for its first launch on May 7. A second Ariane 5 launch is planned for the fall. The booster will be able to place 6.8 tons into geostationary transfer orbit.
Cosmonauts aboard the Russian space station Mir were able to celebrate the new year with gifts and some brandy.
The gifts, brandy, and a small artificial tree were sent to the cosmonauts last month on an unmanned resupply spacecraft. Brandy was substituted for the traditional champagne since the bubbly spirit would spray throughout the spacecraft when the cork was removed.
The three cosmonauts also drew lots to see who would portray Father Frost, a Russian version of Santa Claus.
Overheating of the first-stage thrust vector control system and a malfunction in the inertial measurement unit on the Lockheed Martin Launch Vehicle-1 Demonstration Launch Vehicle resulted in the destruction of the vehicle 160 seconds after liftoff on August 15, Lockheed Martin officials said last month.
The LMLV instrumentation system provided extensive analog and digital data, enabling detailed analysis of the two anomalies by a company-led Failure Review Board established to identify the cause of the loss of the vehicle and to recommend changes to eliminate the problems. The results of the review board's investigations were reviewed and approved by an independent Senior Review Team, which will issue its final report in January.
"We are incorporating design changes to fix these problems," said Howard Trudeau, vice president, engineering, of Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space, Missile Systems Division. "We're making the required fixes and I'm confident in launching the next vehicle as scheduled."
The first anomaly occurred 80 seconds after liftoff during thrust tail-off of the Thiokol Castor 120 first stage, near the beginning of a planned 70-second coast phase, when the vehicle suddenly pitched nose up. The pitch-up occurred because an electrical cable between the first-stage controller and the pitch actuator in the thrust vector control system experienced heating during flight in excess of its specifications.
Video of the vehicle in flight shows hydraulic fluid from the first-stage thrust vector control system igniting while being vented overboard. The burning fluid was recirculated back on the aft end of the first stage. The burning fluid overheated the cable, which changed the cable's electrical characteristics and caused erroneous feedback signals in the thrust vector control system. This failure cause has been demonstrated in the laboratory.
The vehicle's guidance and control system continuously commanded corrections maneuvers, but the erroneous feedback signals caused incorrect first-stage nozzle movements, resulting in the vehicle tumbling end over end at 30 degrees per second when the first-stage thrust ended. The end-over-end rotation continued through the 70-second coast period. The Orbit Adjust Module attitude control system was operating and attempted to correct the vehicle attitude. However it was not designed, nor capable of controlling the entire vehicle.
The second anomaly occurred 127 seconds after liftoff, during the coast phase. The vehicle's inertial measurement unit (IMU), supplied by Litton Guidance and Control Systems, malfunctioned due to electrical arcing within the unit. The arcing was caused by exposing the high voltage circuits within the IMU to the low atmospheric pressure at high altitude.
When the IMU malfunctioned, it began providing incorrect data on the orientation of the vehicle. At the programmed time, when the first stage separated and the second stage motor ignited 150 seconds after liftoff, the vehicle attempted to orient itself using an incorrect navigation solution and began flying off course.
U.S. Air Force range-safety officers commanded destruction of the LMLV 160 seconds into the flight when the vehicle was 290 miles down range and at an altitude of 484,000 feet.
"We are implementing high-confidence, robust solutions," Trudeau said. "We will increase thermal insulation on the first-stage aft components and will capture the hydraulic fluid instead of letting it vent. The IMU high-voltage circuits will be encapsulated and the entire unit will be sealed."
Two teams of Lockheed Martin and independent engineers studied flight data to pinpoint the cause of the failure. The Failure Review Board is headed by Tom McGrath, chief engineer of the Missile Systems Division, with support from the LMLV team members. The Senior Review Team, led by Forrest S. McCartney, vice president, launch operations, at Lockheed Martin Astronautics, was charged with challenging and verifying findings of the Failure Review Board. This independent review team includes representatives from NASA, CTA, TRW, Aerospace Corporation, U.S. Aviation Underwriters, Inc., Lockheed Martin and selected consultants.
The next two LMLV-1 launches of the Lewis and Clark satellites will take place in the summer and early fall of 1996. The details are being discussed with NASA and our two payload customers, TRW and CTA.
This was recommended reading by another space activist, and I can heartily recommend it to you. Place it on your "must read" list.
The book covers a little bit of the history of space exploration. For those of you who remember sitting in school hallways watching the original Mercury launches on B+W TV's, your blood will boil when you read that Apollo, the first step into space, was really and truly intended as a dead end, which it became. If you already have a healthy distrust for politicians, you'll have a healthier distrust after that.
Aside from the political explanations for the early days of the space program, the authors do a very good job of explaining just what resources are available in space, and how to go about exploring them. They do this in a manner which provides enough information to be credible, without overwhelming the reader with facts, figures, and charts. In other words, it is technical, but not overly so. It is interesting, not dry reading.
This was on my "must own" list until the young lady filling out my order form quoted the price. $56.00 list, with a 15% store discount. A little steep for explaining to my wife while economically recovering from a month long layoff. If you can afford your own copy, get one and forcibly lend it out to your friends and acquaintances, telling them they simply have to read it. Originally published by Columbia University Press in 1987, this book is crying out for an updated paperback edition. If you have influence with any paperback publishers, mention this to them. If your public library is well equipped, you should be able to obtain the hardback through them.
[Ed. Note: This is the first part of a summary of a presentation by Drew LePage on Russia's remote sensing satellites. Later installments of the summary will appear in future issues.]
After listening to Drew's excellent presentation, it would be naive for anyone to still believe that the Russian space effort was mostly a propaganda ploy, and that their spacecraft and sensors were crude and unreliable. They developed their learning curve from early failures as we did. While we were building three to five prototypes, they had production lines continuously building boosters, and sensors. They were launching their satellites with some regularity, and upgrading the equipment as they progressed.
On the other hand, the United States space program was being run in a haphazard stop and go mode. It was a case of the scientists versus the U. S. Congress with Congress holding the purse strings. There was the "What's in it for my district?" syndrome plus a paranoid fear of failure. The effect was an attempt by NASA to create failproof systems which required more components which increased the failure modes and spiraled up the costs. This introduced a whole new world for the cost cutters in Congress to rampage around in.
Meanwhile, at the VNII Electromechanical factory in Russia, the Russians began producing their weather, and earth sensing satellites, starting in 1966 with the Meteor-1, the first of the 3 Meteor series. This was a relatively unsophisticated, cylindrical body carrying low resolution visible and infrared sensors. Thirty-one Meteor-1's were launched at the rate 3 to 4 a year, ending in 1978. The data that was collected was downlinked by radio, requiring a large number of launches. The Cyclone-3 booster used to launch the Meteor series was also used as a launch vehicle for the SS-9 ICBM (similar to the Titan-II) modified for the different payloads. From 1975 to 1978 the Meteor-1 underwent a series of improvements, and several experimental launches, finally emerging as the Meteor-2.
The Meteor-2 was designed as a mid-altitude (950 km) meteorology satellite and instrumented with pressurized visible light telephotometers plus multiband infrared sensing devices with improved resolution. They were injected into an 83-degree inclination polar orbit by the Cyclone-3 booster, launched from Plesetsk in Russia. Data downlinking was upgraded to automatic picture transmission to earth stations. Twenty-one satellites of this model, weighing 1500 kg each, were launched between 1978 and 1988 before being replaced by the Meteor-3.
The Meteor-3 used the same booster and launch site as its predecessor, and was placed in a similar orbit, but at 1200 km altitude. With the addition of 700 kg of remote sensing instrumentation mounted on an interface plate in an earth pointing mode, its weight was increased to 2150 kg. This consisted of a low and moderate resolution scanning telephotometer, a scanning high resolution IR radiometer, a wide field scanning IR interferometer, two multichannel UV spectrometers, and a varying galaxy of guest instruments from other nation space agencies.
David will bring the MITy rover, designed to explore a planetary or Lunar surface. He will describe other Draper autonomous vehicles, including underwater vehicles and an autonomous helicopter designed for an aerial contest. The latest vehicle is Companion, a mini-rover system (36 x 24 x 40 in) with onboard planning capability. Companion has been developed to serve as a unmanned vehicle testbed. Available operational modes range from complete operator control to full vehicle autonomy. The robot is able to sense and map the environment, track and localize its position, and plan and execute guidance commands without external sources. The hardware design strategy achieves good system performance at affordable cost by fusing output from several low-cost sensors. Software capability includes generating occupancy grid maps with probabilistic representations of obstacle likelihood that are built up in time from multiple sensor returns and any a priori knowledge. A search method is used for route planning. Note the new date: the meeting was originally scheduled for January 4.
There will be a meeting for all those interested in the "Regolith Rocket" project at 6:30pm (one hour before the regular meeting) at the site of the meeting. Contact Bruce Mackenzie (617/258-2828, bam@draper.com) with any questions about the project.
Speaker to be determined
PASA meets regularly for a business luncheon and formal meeting from 1-3 pm, the third Saturday of every month at Smart Alex Restaurant, Sheraton University City, 35th & Chestnut. 2 hours of free parking with validation.
Scheduled activities: Mon., Jan. 8th, 6-8 pm, informal meeting at Houlihan's on Rittenhouse Sq. Sat., Jan. 20th, formal meeting. Tue., Feb. 6th, infomal meeting. Sat., Feb. 17th, formal meeting. Call Michelle for details.
Dec. 2nd: Several members spent a hectic but fun-filled day at the Franklin Institute. They met at 10 AM next to the full-scale model of T-Rex and toured the special exhibit: "The Dinosaurs of Jurassic Park."
At 11 AM they went to see the Omniverse movie: "Africa: The Serengeti" which is a powerful and dramatic documentary of life (and death) on the plains. This is a must see movie. The short, "Philadelphia Anthem" was also shown, which depicts life in Philadelphia, and masterfully uses the capabilities of filming for the Omniverse theater.
After lunch it was off to the Fels Planetarium at 1:15 pm for "Star of Wonder," which is a holiday show, including the Star of Bethlehem. In The Musser Choices Forum at 2 PM there was a delightlful presentation of "Dinosaurs and Monsters in the Movies." This even allowed the audience to participate in the making of a monster movie. (Yes, Godzilla did trash the State Penitentiary!)
The group took a ride to "Dino Island" on the Reactor at 3PM. This virtual reality trek was realistic and is a definite must do for everyone. The fellowship and fun were great, and hopefully this will become an annual event. Special thanks to Jay Haines who provided free passes.
Dec. 7th: Star Party in Collegeville sponsored by WHYY and the Franklin Institute. Derrick Pitts was broadcasting. It was fun, but the full moon wasn't great for star gazing. There were several large telescopes, and it was also nice to get the Galileo update as it came in. It was a call-in show, and we should have had the switchboard buzzing. As it was, they didn't get many calls, which certainly won't encourage them to do this sort of thing often. The next time we need to organize.
Dec. 16th: Election of Officers. President: Michelle Baker, VP-Public Relations: Mitch Gordon, Secretary: Jay Haines, Treasurer: Oscar Howard Harris, Directors: Earl Bennett, Rich Bowers, Jim Chestek, Dottie Kurtz, Hank Smith.
1996 Mission Statement: Asteroids: The Promise and the Peril. We plan a one-half day session on this topic for the 1996 New York Space Expo & International Space Development Conference, May 23-27, 1996. Help needed! Contact Michelle to volunteer. Sign up for the ISDC. It's right in our back yard.
PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE
After participating for nearly ten years in the space activist
community, I've realized that no matter how different our views about
near-term tactics, nearly all pro-space enthusiasts share the same
long-term vision. That vision includes human settlements throughout the
Solar System (on the Moon, on Mars, the moons of the gas giants, the
asteroids, and deep space habitats), each trading materials and products
with each other and with Earth. It's only when we try to prepare a vision
of the next few years that we get into trouble.
Many in the space movement have contended that government is the problem."If not for....NASA, we'd be halfway to the stars." The magic bullet for these people has been for government to step aside and let the private sector open the space frontier. Well, in many respects, government has stepped aside. Except for Shuttle specific payloads, all satellite launches (government or private) are bid out to commercial launch providers. The federal government has approved allocation of spectrum to LEO telecommunications satellite systems like Iridium, and relaxed the restrictions on remote sensing image-resolution from 30 meters to 1 meter. And the government has provided access (albeit for a price) to government launch ranges for privately developed launch vehicles.
Nothing really stands in the way of any private entity which wishes to develop a new launcher, be it ELV or SSTO or anything in between. Nothing stands in the way of a private space station or a private lunar base. Nothing except the harsh realities of physics and economics. Every small-sat launcher developed to date (Pegasus, LLV, Conestoga, AMROC) has experienced catastrophic failures. The large aerospace firms are reluctant to fund SSTO development under the X-33 program without a "tenancy agreement" which guarantees that a certain amount of launches will be purchased by the taxpayers. No private firm has shown enough interest in space manufacturing, or space solar power, or lunar resources to fund its own R&D effort, much less mount a development program.
Now many think that space tourism will drive private space development.The X-Prize's focus on a reusable launcher which flies ordinary humans on a suborbital trajectory is predicated on that idea. The space tourism study we are helping to conduct for the X-Prize Foundation will provide some hard evidence about the validity of such an expectation. Based on my experience with the survey so far, I think the space tourism advocates may be disappointed. And that leaves us still trying to find those stepping stones which will lead to our common vision of a spacefaring civilization.
RECENT MEETINGS
The December meeting was dedicated to our "Space Video
Extravaganza" featuring recent Shuttle missions, the Mir rendezvous,
various space-related TV shows and some fun odds-and-ends.
ISDC 1997 UPDATE
The conference preparations continue to jet forward! Mark
Chiaccura, our volunteer artist, has prepared a first draft of an ISDC '97
logo, and it's a stunner! The many colors in the design will require
color-laser or 4-color process printing to do it merit, which might be
expensive. Even so, if we choose a less- colorful logo, this design would
look great on a poster or T-shirt!
The Programming Subcommittee met again on November 29. The Excel printout of the tentative plenary & meal speaker list developed at the last meeting was reviewed and approved for now. We continue to collect potential speaker information from magazine articles and other sources.
Following the discussion of speakers, the group discussed the definition of "spacefaring nation" to be used by ISDC '97. This is not a trivia issue, since our logo may contain the flags of "spacefaring nations," and those same groups may be represented in workshops or discussion panels.
After reviewing the history of space launch and space industry activity for a variety of candidate nations, the following list was compiled: Canada, China, European Space Agency, India, Israel, Japan, Russia, United States. The criteria for inclusion were: (1) An active, on-going orbital launch capability (defined as a launch within the last five years), or (2) national contribution to a human spaceflight effort on other than a fee-for- services basis. Canada met criterion (2) with regard to the International Space Station, while the other countries met criterion (1). ESA was chosen to represent France (which may not have an independent launch capability, depending on how you view it), as well as all the countries in Europe contributing to ISF. Kazakhstan was not included because the Tyuratam launch center (formerly Baikonur) is, by treaty, under Russian jurisdiction; the Kazakhs contribute only 6% towards the operation of the launch facility in exchange for 15% of its revenue.
Finally, the ISDC committee discussed ideas for the ISDC '97 promotional event to be held at the ISDC '96 banquet. It is traditional for the staff of the following year's ISDC to make a pitch for their conference at the banquet. Last year, the New York conference did a Lettermanesque "Top Ten Reasons To Attend ISDC '96," while the Huntsville, AL conference had a singing troupe of Southern Belles. After reviewing several proposals, everyone agreed that Tim Dunlap's concept held the most promise. Details will not be revealed here to preserve the surprise!
APOLLO 13 UPDATE
NSS HQ recently released some new Apollo 13 event statistics. The
campaign brought in a total of 631 new NSS members, 436 by mail and 195 by
phone. So far, 220 of the mail and all of the phone memberships have been
reviewed for chapter affiliation. Of the 220 mail-in forms reviewed, 21
(about 10%) were from chapters. MOSS accounted for five of those. The
five new members cited by NSS staff did not include some which we already
knew about, so our total will be higher. Our chapter accounted for the
largest total of those counted (Western Spaceport had three).
SPACE TOURISM SURVEY
The X-Prize Foundation has asked NSS to help it survey "ordinary
people" to determine the potential for space tourism. To stimulate the
rapid submission of as many surveys as possible, NSS is offering $500 to
the chapter which first submits 1,000 surveys. A $100 prize will be
awarded to the next four highest- producing chapters. To qualify for the
prizes, chapters must submit their completed surveys "en masse," and each
survey must bear the chapter's NSS code number.
Anticipating that MOSS may wish to compete for the $500 prize, the Executive Board had 1,100 copies of the survey prepared in time for the November meeting. The members present discussed whether the chapter should make an all-out effort to collect survey responses. Because the survey was so wordy, and its format (one page, double-sided) made clipboard use difficult, the members concluded that collection of large number of surveys would be difficult.
Rather than conduct mass survey collection drives, the members elected to take surveys home and complete as many as possible among friends, family and co-workers. The membership also adopted the policy of not asking for names and addresses on the forms, given the private socio-economic data which was also requested. Members felt that more surveys could be obtained without address information, and that requesting such information would only frustrate the primary objective of collecting large numbers of surveys quickly.
The C.I.S. manned space station Mir with Mir-20 (call sign 'Uran') Cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko, Sergei Avdeyev and Thomas (DF4TR / DP0MIR) Reiter and will be appearing in the mid west US evening skies December 15th to January 6th. It returns to the morning skies Jan 11th to Feb 7th.
Amateur radio operators can log into the Mir 'Packet' (R0MIR-1) BBS on 145.550MHz simplex and soon on 435.775MHz uplink / 437.975 downlink MHz. The cosmonauts also use the frequencies 145.200MHz, up and 145.800MHz down or 435.725MHz Up /437.925MHz down or 145.550Mhz simplex to talk or send SSTV video with amateur radio operators on the ground during their off-hours.
For exact times and locations to see the space station over your backyard call MN MIRWATCH Coordinator Ben Huset at (612) 639-9109.
Look for MIRWATCH and other great space stuff on my web page at http://www.skypoint.com/~benhuset/ and EUROMIR '95 web pages at http://www.op.dlr.de/EUROMIR95/.
BOO's to ESA management who 'burned the fingers' of their EUROMIR '95 web master George, for posting a report describing the coolant leak aboard Mir. Hey guys, you can't post just the GOOD NEWS. Since then there has been almost no updates of ANY kind to this site. This HAD been my BEST source of Mir info.
The Russian crew members of the 20th Main Expedition to MIR made a short 37 min EVA on Dec 8th, 1995. The hatch was opened at 19:15 UTC and closed at 19:52 UTC. The docking-cone fixed on the port of the -Z-axis (were Kristall is docked) has been moved to the only free docking port of the Transition section (P.Kh.O.), +Z. So this port is now ready for the eventual reception of the Priroda Module in March 1996.
The Progress M29 robotic freighter vehicle undocked and burned up over the Pacific Ocean on Dec 19th. The cosmonauts tried to observe and film the M29 during reentry into the atmosphere, but these attempts failed due the fact that Spektr Module blocked the sight. It was replaced by the Progress M30 spacecraft on Dec 20, 1995. It brought up the usual 2 tons of supplies. fuel, air, water and some special holiday foods and gifts.
The 1st Art Exhibition in Earth Orbit ARS AD ASTRA results were announced. Thomas Reiter and his two Russians colleagues Sergei Avdeev and Yuri Ghidzenko had the task of deciding which of the twenty art works best fulfilled the theme of the project 'Space & Humanity'. After more than one week of deliberations the cosmonauts made their difficult decision. They first narrowed down their choice to ten artworks then to just three. The painting they liked the best was: "When Dreams Are Born" By American artist Elisabeth Carroll Smith. The decision was announced during a live 20 minute video link-up with the Mir station on November 30 as a part of ESA's "Art & Space" event which was hosted by the Euro Space Center in Transinne, Belgium. To see all 20 space art images goto: http://www.access.ch/ours/astrapic.html
One Space Station 'On-Orbit' is worth Two 'On The Drawing Boards': In December the Russians flew a kite about the use of the Modules Spektr and Priroda for the International Space Station Alpha. They even suggested the option to use the present MIR space station as the first 'agglutination point' for Alpha. NASA was willing to listen to their Russian partners, but so far has showed no enthusiasm.
With global budget winds that blew down the Freedom and Mir 2 space stations still blowing strong on Alpha the suggestion of just adding on and replacing 'as you can' rather that tossing the old away before the NEW is fully built approach makes some sense to me. There are many complex political and engineering pros and cons to this plan. Everybody is dreading YET ANOTHER re-design cycle.
From Cosmonaut to Politician: Following in the steps of Astronaut/Senator John Glenn, the Russians on Dec 17th re-elected cosmonaut German Titov, and elected cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya to the Duma (Russian Congress).
As of this writing the results of ex-cosmonauts Vitaly Sevostyanov, Vladimir Dzhanibekov, Viktor Gorbatko, Yevgeny Khrunov, Viktor Savinykh, and Vladimir Kovalyonok election bids were unknown to me. There were three ex-cosmonauts in office before the elections.
Do try to read the IEEE Spectrum Dec '95 cover story on the Russian space program. The story by analyst Jim Oberg, tells first hand, of the great efforts and deteriorating conditions of the Russian Space program.
Lost and Found: Geoffrey E. Perry, who heads the Kettering Space Observer Group, has found a $17-million German/Russian spacecraft. "Express" was given up for lost into the Pacific ocean, after its Japanese booster malfunctioned on Jan. 15, 1995. Unknown to launch officials, it came floating down, 2.5 orbits later, safely on its parachute near a partially inhabited area of Ghana, West Africa.
Ghanaians heard a sonic boom, looked up and saw this large bell shaped, smoking object, the size of a car, slowly descending on an orange parachute. The Ghanaians saw the spacecraft land -- and found Russian Cyrillic writing on its parachute. They had no idea it was a German project launched from Japan. The vehicle generated an article or two in the local newspaper. But there was no significant action on the vehicle, until research by Perry helped to locate the spacecraft for Daimler-Benz Aerospace.
The next Shuttle mission is STS-72, still scheduled for January 11.
The 20th main expedition to the Mir complex continues its work. On Jan 1 at 0000:00 UTC, the crew of Yuriy Gidzenko, Sergey Avdeev, and Thomas Reiter had been in flight for 119 days 14 hours 59 min 38 sec (remembering to put in that leap second at 1995 Dec 31d 23h 59m 60s!) since the liftoff of their Soyuz TM-22 spaceship from pad 1 at Baykonur on Sep 3.
The Indian Space Research Organization's IRS-1C (Indian Remote Sensing Satellite) satellite was launched from Baykonur on Dec 28. This was the first Russian launch into a retrograde (99 degree) orbit using the Molniya-M four stage rocket; earlier Russian retrograde launches used the Vostok rocket which has now been retired. The Molniya-M for this flight used a fourth stage called the Blok 2BL, which fired to place IRS-1C in a circular 101.1 min, 805 x 817 km x 98.6 deg sun-synchronous orbit. The Blok-I third stage appears to have been suborbital, the first time such a flight profile has been used. The IRS-1C is more advanced than earlier Indian remote sensing satellites, with a 10-m resolution panchromatic camera and a 20-m resolution multispectral camera.
Also launched with IRS-1C was the Skipper subsatellite, a joint project between the US Ballistic Missile Defense Organization and the Russian Defense Ministry which will simulate ICBM reentry and test out aerobraking techniques. According to my rather out of date information, the payload is built by the Utah State University Space Dynamics Lab in collaboration with the Moscow Aviation Institute and has a mass of 230 kg; it will maneuver to a low perigee and then deorbit over Kwajalein in the Pacific in about a week. Anyone with more info on Skipper is encouraged to get in touch.
Echostar 1, a Lockheed Martin Astro Space AS7000 series television broadcast satellite, was successfully launched by a Chinese Chang Zheng 2E rocket on Dec 28 into low Earth orbit. An EPKM solid kick motor fired to place the satellite in a 222 x 35081 km x 24.4 deg geostationary transfer orbit, from where the satellite's liquid apogee engine would further raise the orbit to a circular geostationary one. Echostar carries 16 Ku-band transponders.
NASA-Goddard's X-Ray Timing Explorer satellite was launched on Dec 30 from pad 17A at Cape Canaveral. It entered a 565 x 583 km x 23.0 deg orbit. The satellite carries the PCA (Proportional Counter Array) instrument with large collecting area but low spatial resolution, for accurate timing and 2-60 keV spectral measurements of bright X-ray sources. The HEXTE (High Energy X-ray Timing Experiment) will study X-rays of higher energy (up to 200 keV) and the ASM (All Sky Monitor) has a wide field of view to spot X-ray flare stars and burst sources in the 2-10 keV range. XTE was built by NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center.
XTE's launch vehicle was a two stage McDonnell Douglas Delta 7920-10 model, Delta 230. Launch was at 1348 UTC on Dec 30; first the two liquid vernier engines ignite, and immediately afterwards the main engine ignited successfully, 2.5 seconds before liftoff. Six of the nine Hercules GEM solid rocket motors (Nos. 1,2,3,7,8 and 9) ignited and the vehicle left the pad. The six solids burnt out and separated as solids 4,5 and 6 ignited, at around T+1 min 5 sec. Solids 4,5 and 6 then burnt out and separated at 2min 11 sec. The main RS-27 engine cutoff at 4min 20 sec and the first, Thor-derived, stage fell away at 4:29. The Delta second stage ignited its AJ-10-118K liquid engine at 4:34 and the 10-foot payload shroud, having survived those upper-level winds, was jettisoned at 4:40, at an altitude of 143 km. The first burn of the second stage shut down at 1358 UTC, T+9:55, with Delta/XTE in a 157 x 613 km x 28.73 deg Earth orbit. The combination coasted toward apogee for an hour, and at 1456 (T+1:08:18) the Delta reignited for a 1 min 31 sec burn to circularize the orbit at 565 x 583 km x 23.0 deg. Delta 230 separated from XTE at 1506 UTC. At 1526 UTC Delta 230 ignited for the third time in an evasive maneuver to leave the vicinity of XTE, and at 1534 UTC the AJ-10-118K was turned on for the fourth and last time in a depletion burn intended to lower the orbit and get rid of residual propellant, to avoid the possibility of a later explosion (in the 1970s exploding relic Delta stages were responsible for significant contributions to the orbital debris population). It ended up in a 176 x 575 km x 25.0 deg orbit and should reenter rapidly.
Satellite catalog number 23658, which had been reserved for the Fasat-Alfa Chilean subsatellite that failed to separate from Sich-1, has now been assigned to the Centaur AC-117 stage from the JCSAT-3 launch, which on Dec 17 was tracked in a 175 x 79168 km x 22.93 deg orbit. Cataloged with Kosmos-2326 (1995-71A, 23748) is the rocket stage (1995-71C, 23750) which reentered on the day of launch, implying the existence of an object (1995-71B, 23749) for which no elements have yet been released. This may be a misunderstanding based on the incorrect assumption that the Konus-A experiment is intended to separate from the main satellite, and the catalog number may be reassigned. The Goddard OIG group has reported the decay of object 23453 (Kosmos-2305), as suggested by me in JSR 269, although they confused the issue by labelling it Kosmos-398!
The Gals 2 satellite has been positioned at 70.9E over the Indian Ocean. Asiasat 2 has reached geostationary position at 100.5E. Telecom 2C fired its apogee engine between Dec 17 and Dec 21, immediately reaching its geostationary location at 1.0E. Insat 2C arrived at its 92.5E position on Dec 19. On Dec 24 Galaxy 3R raised its transfer orbit to 1292.35 min, 30054 x 35793 km x 1.4 deg. Another engine firing on Dec 26 completed the ascent to synchronous altitude, placing it in a 1435.46 min, 35756 x 35792 km x 0.1 deg orbit drifting E over 94.9W.
TDRS 1 left its 139.6W position in mid December to drift E. The German television satellite DFS Kopernikus 1 left its 33E slot on around Dec 14. The US Navy UHF F6 completed its testing period at 171W and moved during November-December to a new location at 105.3W. Intelsat 503 has reached a new station at 157.0E.
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Nov 4 1422 Radarsat ) Delta 7920 Vandenberg SLC2W Rem sensing 59A
SURFSAT ) 59B
Nov 6 0515 Milstar DFS 2 Titan 4 Centaur Canaveral LC40 Comsat 60A
Nov 12 1230 Atlantis ) Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 61A
Docking Module )
Nov 17 0120 ISO Ariane 44P Kourou ELA2 Astronomy 62A
Nov 17 1425 Gals-2 Proton-K/DM2 Baykonur LC200L Comsat 63A
Nov 28 1130 Asiasat 2 Chang Zheng 2E Xichang Comsat 64A
Dec 2 0808 SOHO Atlas IIAS Canaveral LC36B Astronomy 65A
Dec 5 2118 USA 116 Titan 4 Vandenberg SLC4E Recon 66A
Dec 6 2323 Telecom 2C ) Ariane 44L Kourou ELA2 Comsat 67A
Insat 2C ) Comsat 67B
Dec 14 0610 Kosmos-2323 ) Navsat 68A
Kosmos-2324 ) Proton-K/DM2 Baykonur LC200L Navsat 68B
Kosmos-2325 ) Navsat 68C
Dec 15 0023 Galaxy IIIR Atlas IIA Canaveral LC36A Comsat 69A
Dec 18 1431 Progress M-30 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo ship 70A
Dec 20 0052 Kosmos-2326 Tsiklon-2 Baykonur LC90 Eorsat/Sci 71A
Dec 28 0645 IRS-1C ) Molniya-M Baykonur LC31 Rem.sensing 72A
Skipper ) Military 72B
Dec 28 1150 Echostar 1 Chang Zheng 2E Xichang Comsat 73A
Dec 30 1348 XTE Delta 7920 Canaveral LC17A Astronomy 74A
Nov 5 Columbia Landed at KSC Nov 18 Molniya-1 (80-92A) Reentered Nov 20 Atlantis Landed at KSC Dec 7 Galileo Probe Entered Jovian atmosphere Dec 11 Kosmos-398 Reentered over Pacific Dec 18 Kosmos-2305 Deorbited
Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due
OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 2 STS-75 Feb 22
OV-103 Discovery Palmdale OMDP
OV-104 Atlantis OPF Bay 1 STS-76 Mar 21
OV-105 Endeavour LC39B STS-72 Jan 11
ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks
ML1/RSRM-52/ET-75/OV-105 LC39B STS-72
ML2/
ML3/RSRM-53 VAB Bay 1 STS-75
* indicates changes from last month's calendar