[Ed. Note: Go to http://hea-www.harvard.edu/QEDT/jcm/space/jsr/jsr.html for back issues and other information about Jonathan's Space Report.]

Shuttle and Mir

After the failure of Progress M-33 to redock with Mir, it was deorbited at 0235 UTC on Mar 12 and reentered at 0323 UTC over the Pacific Ocean.

The next Shuttle launch is STS-83, scheduled for launch Apr 3 using OV-102 Columbia. It carries a Spacelab Long Module (probably the CD module, Flight Unit 1, which last flew on STS-73/USML-2 - can anyone confirm this?) and an Extended Duration Orbiter pallet. The Spacelab payload is MSL-1 (Microgravity Science Laboratory 1). This is actually the second payload called MSL-1 to fly on the Shuttle, as the STS-7 OSTA-2 payload was also called MSL-1. An MSL-2 flew on mission 61-C in 1986. The earlier MSL-1 and MSL-2 are nothing to do with the new ones. Crew of STS-83 are James Halsell and Susan Still (Commander and Pilot), Janice Voss (Payload Commander), Mike Gernhardt and Donald Thomas (Mission Specialists), and Roger Crouch and Gregory Linteris (Payload Specialists). Cady Coleman is backup to Thomas, who broke his ankle during training, but it now looks like Thomas will be OK to fly. Crouch is a NASA HQ employee, and was backup on IML-1. Linteris works at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

OV-105 Endeavour returned to Kennedy Space Center on Mar 27 after its refurbishment period at Boeing North American in California. It was scheduled to take up the first Shuttle payload to Space Station on STS-88, but the mission has now been postponed and the manifest is being reworked.

AXAF

The Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility is NASA's next observatory-class astronomy satellite. It is due for launch in Aug 1998 on Shuttle OV-102 Columbia. A two-stage IUS will place it in a highly elliptical orbit, and an onboard liquid propulsion system will then raise the orbit to 10000 x 140000 km x 28.5 deg. The telescope has a ten meter focal length. Two cameras (ACIS, which contains ten X-ray CCD imagers based on ASCA/SIS technology, and HRC, which has four microchannel plate pairs similar to the ROSAT/HRI but much bigger) will detect the X-rays, and two gratings may be placed in the beam for high resolution spectroscopy. AXAF will make high spatial and spectral resolution observations of X-ray sources such as quasars, clusters of galaxies, supernova remnants, binary and active stars, and even comets.

Prime contractor TRW, which is building the spacecraft in California, has completed structural tests of the spacecraft bus and fit checks of the telescope tube. Meanwhile in Alabama, scientists from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, MIT, Penn State, Utrecht and MPE/Garching are calibrating the telescope and its science instruments. In a recent press release we announced that mirror tests show we can focus 70 percent of the X-rays from a point source into an image half an arcsecond across, which is much better than X-ray telescopes now on orbit. This is very exciting news, confirming that we've constructed the mirrors correctly; next we test the mirrors in combination with the flight cameras. The calibration tests began in December and have been running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The telescope is in a two-story-high vacuum chamber at NASA-MSFC, and scientists from here are taking turns going down for a week or two to do 12-hour shifts overseeing the operations and data reduction.

Recent Launches

The Tempo 2 direct broadcast satellite was launched by Lockheed Martin's Atlas IIA AC-128 from Cape Canaveral on Mar 8. Tempo is owned by TCI Satellite Entertainment Inc and is a Space Systems/Loral FS-1300 class spacecraft. The Centaur IIA second stage made two burns to place Tempo 2 in a sub-synchronous 369.9 min, 256 x 21125 km x 25.0 deg transfer orbit. It used its own engine to raise orbit to geosynchronous, and on Mar 27 it was on station at 109.9W.

Based on info from Ron Pedersen, I understand that the Intelsat 8 satellites (like Intelsat 801 launched on Mar 1) use the British Royal Ordnance Leros 1 apogee engine.

Erratum: Igor Lissov reports that he believes earlier reports that the Zeya satellite is the same as the Mozhaets satellite are incorrect. So I don't know for sure who built Zeya, although NPO-PM is probably still the contractor and the Russian Defense Ministry is the owner. It may be primarily for communications rather than navigation/geodesy. Zeya is in a 424 x 467 km x 97.3 deg orbit. If anyone has any more details on Zeya, please let me know.

Table of Recent Launches

Date UT       Name            Launch Vehicle  Site            Mission    INTL.
                                                                          DES.

Jan 12 0928   Atlantis         Shuttle        Kennedy LC39B   Spaceship   01A
Jan 17 1628   GPS 42           Delta 7925     Canaveral LC17A Navsat      FTO
Jan 30 2204   GE 2     )       Ariane 44L     Kourou ELA2     Comsat      02A   
              Nahuel 1A)                                      Comsat      02B
Feb 10 1409   Soyuz TM-25      Soyuz-U        Baykonur LC1    Spaceship   03A
Feb 11 0855   Discovery STS-82 Shuttle        Kennedy LC39A   Spaceship   04A
Feb 12 0450   Haruka           M-V            Kagoshima       Astronomy   05A
Feb 14 0347   Kosmos-2337      Tsiklon-3      Plesetsk LC32/1 Comsat      06A
              Kosmos-2338                                     Comsat      06B
              Kosmos-2339                                     Comsat      06C
              Gonets-D1 No. 4                                 Comsat      06D
              Gonets-D1 No. 5                                 Comsat      06E
              Gonets-D1 No. 6                                 Comsat      06F
Feb 17 0142   JCSAT 4          Atlas IIAS     Canaveral LC36B Comsat      07A
Feb 23 2020   DSP F18          Titan 4B       Canaveral LC40  Early Warn  08A
Mar  1 0107   Intelsat 801     Ariane 44P     Kourou ELA2     Comsat      09A
Mar  4 0200   Zeya             Start-1        Svobodniy LC5   Comsat      10A
Mar  8 0601   Tempo 2          Atlas IIA      Canaveral LC36A Comsat      11A

Current Shuttle Processing Status

Orbiters               Location   Mission    Launch Due
                                           
OV-102 Columbia        LC39A         STS-83  Apr  3
OV-103 Discovery       OPF Bay 2     STS-85  Jul 17
OV-104 Atlantis        OPF Bay 3     STS-84  May 15
OV-105 Endeavour       KSC SLF       STS-88  Postponed
                                          
ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks                       
                  
ML1/
ML2/RSRM-60/ET-85           VAB Bay 3      STS-84
ML3/RSRM-59/ET-84/OV-102    LC39A          STS-83

* indicates changes from February's calendar
To see the full calendar, check out http://newproducts.jpl.nasa.gov/calendar/

April 1997

* Apr ?? - SWAS Pegasus XL Launch
* Apr ?? - Iridium-1 Delta 2 Launch
  Apr ?? - Iridium-3 Launch
  Apr ?? - Apstar-2R Long March Launch
  Apr ?? - Tempo-1 Proton Launch
  Apr ?? - Early Bird Cosmos Launch (USA/Russia)
* Apr ?? - Lewis LMLV-1 Launch
  Apr 01 - Comet Hale-Bopp Perihelion (0.914 AU)
* Apr 01 - Venus at Opposition
* Apr 02 - DMSP Titan 2 Launch
  Apr 02 - Asteroid 306 Unitas Occults PPM 721049 (9.5 Magnitude Star)
  Apr 03 - STS-83 Launch, Columbia, Materials Science Lab-1 (MSL-1)
  Apr 04 - Galileo, Europa Observations (Orbit 7)
* Apr 04 - Thaicom-3/BSAT-1A Ariane 4 Launch (ESA/Japan)
  Apr 05 - Galileo, 3rd Ganymede Flyby (Orbit 7)
  Apr 05 - Mercury At Its Greatest Eastern Elongation (19 Degrees)
  Apr 06 - Daylight Savings, Set Clock Ahead 1 Hour (North America)
  Apr 07 - Galileo, Orbital Trim Maneuver #24 (OTM-24)
  Apr 07 - Moon Occults Saturn
  Apr 07 - Moon Occults Venus
  Apr 07 - Asteroid 14 Irene Occults 13.6 Magnitude Star
  Apr 10 - Moon Occults Aldebaran
  Apr 11 - Asteroid 7 Iris at Opposition (9.5 Magnitude)
  Apr 12 - International Astronomy Day
  Apr 15 - Asteroid 13 Egeria Occults 11.8 Magnitude Star
  Apr 15 - Asteroid 29 Amphitrite at Opposition (9.2 Magnitude)
  Apr 15 - Wilbur Wright's 130th Birthday (1867)
  Apr 16 - Asteroid 13 Egeria at Opposition (10.0 Magnitude)
  Apr 16 - Asteroid 324 Bamberga Occults SAO 79765 (9.3 Magnitude Star)
  Apr 16 - 25th Anniversary (1972), Apollo 16 Launch (Manned Moon Landing)
  Apr 17 - Comet Boethin Perihelion (1.158 AU)
  Apr 17 - 30th Anniversary (1967), Surveyor 3 Launch (Moon Lander)
  Apr 18 - Asteroid 139 Juewa Occults PPM 127356 (9.4 Magnitude Star)
  Apr 19 - Goldstone Open House, Near Barstow, California
  Apr 19 - 15th Anniversary (1982), Salyut 7 Space Station Launch (USSR)
  Apr 20 - Lyrids Meteor Shower Peak
* Apr 20 - Comet 1997 C1 Gehrels Perihelion (2.1705 AU)
  Apr 21 - Galileo, Orbital Trim Maneuver #25 (OTM-25)
  Apr 21 - Mars Global Surveyor, Trajectory Correction Maneuver #3 (TCM-3)
  Apr 22 - Mercury Passes 2.7 Degrees from Venus
  Apr 24 - GOES-K Atlas Launch
  Apr 24 - 30th Anniversary (1967), Soyuz 1 Accident, Cosmonaut Killed
  Apr 25 - Asteroid 13 Egeria Occults 10.2 Magnitude Star
  Apr 26 - 35th Anniversary (1962), Ariel 1 Launch (1st United Kingdom
           Satellite)
  Apr 26 - 30th Anniversary (1967), San Marco 2 Launch (1st Equatorial
           Launch)
* Apr 29 - Panamsat-6 Ariane 4 Launch
  Apr 29 - Asteroid 139 Juewa Occults PPM 127386 (7.5 Magnitude Star)

May 1997

* Jun ?? - Intelsat 802 Ariane 4 Launch
  May ?? - Sinosat-1 Long March 3B Launch
  May ?? - Panamsat-5 Proton Launch
* May ?? - Forte Pegasus XL Launch
* May ?? - Inmarsat-3 F-4/Insat-2D Ariane 4 Launch
* May ?? - Clark LMLV-1 Launch
  May 01 - SNOE Pegasus XL Launch
  May 04 - Galileo, Orbital Trim Maneuver #26 (OTM-26)
  May 04 - Moon Occults Saturn
  May 04 - 30th Anniversary (1967), Lunar Orbiter 4 Launch
  May 05 - Moon Occults Mercury
  May 05 - Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower Peak
  May 06 - Galileo, Callisto Observations (Orbit 8)
  May 06 - Comet Hale-Bopp Crosses the Ecliptic Plane
  May 06 - Comet Wild 2 Perihelion (1.57 AU)
  May 07 - Galileo, 4th Ganymede Flyby (Orbit 8)
  May 07 - Mars Pathfinder, Trajectory Correction Maneuver #3 (TCM-3)
  May 07 - 5th Anniversary (1992), STS-49 Launch, 1st Flight of Endeavour
  May 08 - Islamic Year 1418 Begins at Sunset
  May 08 - 35th Anniversary (1962), 1st Atlas Centaur Launch
  May 09 - Asteroid 42 Isis at Opposition (10.4 Magnitude) 
  May 10 - Galileo, Orbital Trim Maneuver #27 (OTM-27)
  May 11 - Possible Mercury Occultation of SAO 110219 (9.3 Magnitude Star)
  May 15 - STS-84 Launch, Atlantis, 6th Shuttle-Mir Mission, SPACEHAB
  May 15 - 10th Anniversary (1987), 1st Energiya Launch (USSR)
  May 21 - NEAR, Trajectory Correction Maneuver #5 (TCM-5)
  May 21 - Asteroid 2554 Skiff Occults Jupiter
  May 22 - Mercury At Its Greatest Western Elongation (25 Degrees)
  May 22 - Asteroid 354 Eleonora Occults PPM 163336 (9.6 Magnitude Star)
  May 23 - Seastar Pegasus XL Launch
  May 23 - Comet Encke Perihelion (0.331 AU)
  May 24 - 35th Anniversary (1962), Aurora 7 Launch (Scott Carpenter)
  May 25 - Pluto at Opposition
* May 26 - Progress M-35 Launch (Russia)
  May 26 - Possible Mercury Occultation of SAO 93006 (7.0 Magnitude Star)
  May 28 - Comet Hartley 1 Perihelion (1.819 AU)
* May 29 - John F. Kennedy's 80th Birthday (1917)
  May 30 - GFO-1 Launch
* May 30 - Comet C/1996 R3 Perihelion (1.770 AU)
  May 30 - Possible Mercury Occultation of SAO 93181 (8.3 Magnitude Star)
  May 31-Jun 01 - Jet Propulsion Lab Open House, Pasadena, California