Jonathan's Space Report
No.
777 2020 Apr 17
Somerville,
MA
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
COVID-19
--------
I
am the one entity you get emails from who is *not* sending you a special email
about
what I'm doing about the pandemic. But: I hope you are all safe and
well.
International Space
Station
---------------------------
The Cygnus NG-12 cargo ship S.S.
Alan Bean was deorbited over the Pacific on Mar 17;
the last telemetry signal
was at 2316:56 UTC.
The Dextre robot arm removed the Bartolomeo
experiment platform Dragon CRS-20's trunk on Mar 25.
Bartolomeo was attached
to the Columbus module on Apr 2.
Dragon CRS-20 was unberthed from the
Harmony module at about 1030 UTC
Apr 7 and released into orbit at 1306 UTC.
After a deorbit burn the
cabin splashed down at about 117.5W 26.5N in the
Pacific at 1850 UTC.
Soyuz MS-16 was launched on Apr 9 at 0805 UTC and
docked with the Poisk module after 6hr 8min at 1413 UTC.
Crew of Soyuz MS-16
are Anatoliy Ivanishin, Ivan Vagner and Chris Cassidy. This was the
first
launch of a Soyuz-2-1a launch vehicle carrying a crew.
After a one-week
handover to the new crew, Chris Cassidy took command of ISS.
Soyuz MS-15
undocked from the Zvezda module at 0153 UTC Apr 17 with Oleg
Skripochka,
Jessica Meir and Drew Morgan aboard, bringing Expedition 62
to a close and
marking the start of Expedition 63. The deorbit burn was
at 0422 UTC for 4m
41s, lowering the orbit to about -18 x 423 km. Soyuz
MS-15 landed in
Kazakhstan at 0516 UTC.
Ariane
-------
Last issue I
inadvertently omitted discussion of the Ariane launch on Feb 18.
On Feb 18 at
2218 UTC Ariane vehicle L5111, flight VA252, took off from Kourou and
headed
to a 6 degree inclination geotransfer orbit. This was the third launch
of the new Ariane 5ECA+
variant with an ESC-D upper stage, stretched by 4 cm
relative to the older ESC-A allowing it
to carry 360 kg of additional
propellant. The earlier 5ECA+ flights were VA249 and VA251.
The upper
payload was JCSAT-17 for Sky Perfect JSAT. with a launch mass
of 5857 kg.
Unlike previous JCSAT satellites, this one carries a large
18-metre-dia
Harris S-band antenna on a long boom. The S-band system
supports
communications for disasters and other high traffic events. The
satellite,
using a Lockheed Martin A2100 buss, also carries the usual
Ku-band and C-band
communications payloads.
The lower payload is GEO-Kompsat 2B, for South
Korea's aerospace
institute KARI. In the launch table I had accidentally
labelled
GEO-Kompsat 2B as "Comms" but it is a weather/remote sensing
satellite,
not a communications satellite. GEO-Kompsat 2B, with a launch mass
of
3379 kg, carries the GOCI-II ocean color imager and the
GEMS
spectrometer. GEMS, built by Ball Aerospace, is a visible/UV
spectrometer
which gives hourly time resolution measurements of ozone and
pollutants in the
Asia-Pacific
region.
OSIRIS-REX
----------
The OSIRIS-REX space program
remains in orbit around Bennu. It began the
Recon B mission phase in January,
with 620m altitude flybys of sites
Nightingale and Osprey on Jan 22 and Feb
13 respectively. The Recon C
phase is now underway. On Mar 3 at 1900 UTC the
probe departed from its
1.4 km altitude orbit to perform a `swoop' over the
Nightingale
candidate landing site. It passed only 251.6 metres above
Bennu's
surface at 2129:48 UTC Mar 3 and reentered the 1.4 km orbit with a
burn
at 0005 UTC Mar 4. A 250m pass of site Osprey is expected in
May.
(Thanks to Erin Morton for the Mar 3-4 details).
On Apr 14 O-REX
carreid out a Checkpoint Rehearsal; at 1852 UTC it
maneuvered from a 1.0 x
1.0 km orbit to a 0.13 x 1.0 km one. At 2251 UTC
at 0.13 km altitude it made
the `checkpoint burn' to begin descent to
the asteroid. Then at 2300 UTC, as
it reached a record close distance
of 75m to the asteroid surface, it made a
preplanned abort of the
approach in a `backaway burn' and began its return to
the 1 km orbit.
The TAGSAM sampler was deployed and retracted during the
operation.
Starlink
---------
Starlink-1220, one of the
satellites on the 5th Starlink launch, was
deorbited on Mar 9 from a 324 x
361 km orbit.
As of Mar 10 there were 20 sats from launch 3 and 39 sats
from launch 4
undergoing orbital plane drift at the 350 km `pause' altitude,
with 40
of the launch 5 satellites reaching or paused at that altitude.
On
Mar 11 to 13 all 99 of these sats abruptly began raising their orbits
again,
without waiting for their target orbital planes to be reached.
I speculate
that the plane-relocation process requires extra personnel
and the abrupt
orbit raising towards the operational 550 km orbit is
a contingency activity
in response to COVID19.
On Mar 18 SpaceX launched the sixth batch of
satellites, A single
burn of the upper stage placed the satellites in a 209 x
366 km orbit.
The Falcon 9 first stage, on its fifth flight, suffered one
engine
shutdown during ascent, and failed to land on the droneship on
descent.
This did not affect the successful orbit insertion of the
second
stage. The second stage was deorbited over the eastern
Pacific.
Recent observations by Richard Cole (Res.Notes.AAS, in press)
and
Tregloan-Reed et al (arxiv2003.07251) show that in the days
after
reaching its operational orbit at the beginning of March,
Starlink-1130
(Darksat) was indeed about a magnitude fainter than other
Starlink
satellites, indicating that the special coating has been
reasonably
successful. My own analysis of the astronomical impact of Starlink
has
been published as
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ab8016
(Astrophysical
Journal Letters, v. 892) and
https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.07446
OneWeb
------
34 more OneWeb satellites were launched from
Baykonur on Mar 21 into a 440 x 475 km parking
orbit. The satellites will
later raise their orbits to over 1000 km altitude.
Meanwhile, the OneWeb
operating company has gone bankrupt (although the associated
manufacturing
company OneWeb Satellites emphasizes that it, in contrast, is not
bankrupt.)
CZ-7A
-----
The first Chang Zheng 7A failed to reach
orbit on Mar 16, sometime after
second stage ignition. It's unclear whether
the failure was in the third
stage's first burn, or possibly due to a second
stage explosion.
Planned parking orbit was 195 x 195 km x 20 deg; a
second burn of the third stage would
have delivered CAST/Beijing's XJS-6
(Xinjishu Yanzheng 6, New Technology
Validation Satellite) to geotransfer
orbit. My guess is XJS-6 was
something similar to a DFH-5 communications
satellite, of order 5 tonnes
mass. The CZ-7A combines the earlier CZ-7
vehicle with a hydrogen/oxygen
upper stage from the CZ-3
series.
Nusantara Dua
-------------
China suffered another
launch failure on Apr 7, when a Chang Zheng 3B
failed late in the first burn
of the third stage and reentered over the
Pacific near Guam and Saipan. The
payload was Nusantara Dua (also called
Palapa N1), a Chinese DFH-4E
communications satellite for the Indonesian
company PSNS (a consortium of
Pasifik Satelit Nusantara and Indosat).
The 5550 kg satellite was destroyed
as a result of the failure.
Glonass
--------
Russia launched a
Soyuz-2-1B from Plesetsk on Mar 16. The Fregat No. 112-11 upper stage put the
Uragan-M No. 760
(codename Kosmos-2545) navigation satellite in orbit. The
satellite will form part of the GLONASS system,
probably replacing satellite
no. 735.
YG-30
-----
The sixth group of three Yaogan-30
satellites were launched on Mar 24. The YG-30 satellites
are thought to be
for signals intelligence.
AEHF 6
------
A United Launch
Alliance Atlas V, flight AV-086, flew from Cape Canaveral on Mar 26,
After
the second Centaur burn, to geotransfer orbit, the TDO 2 tracking calibration
satellite was
ejected from the Centaur aft bulkhead. A further burn will
raise perigee, putting the AEHF 6
communications satellite in transfer orbit
for the US Space Force.
Table of Recent Orbital
Launches
----------------------------------
Date UT Name
Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. Catalog Perigee
Apogee Incl Notes
Mar 7 0450 Dragon CRS-20 Falcon
9 Canaveral SLC40 Cargo 16A S45341 204 x 384 x 51.6
Mar 9
1155 Beidou DW 54 Chang Zheng 3B Xichang Nav
17A S45344 231 x 35775 x 28.4
Mar 16 1334 XJS 6
Chang Zheng 7A Wenchang LC201 Tech F02 F01450 -2000?x 200?x
20.0
Mar 16 1828 Kosmos-2545 Soyuz-2-1B/Fregat Plesetsk
LC43/4 Nav 18A S45358 19131x 19155 x 64.8
Mar 18 1216 Starlink
1207 ) Falcon 9 Kennedy SLC39A Comms 19A
209 x 366 x 53.0
Starlink 1213 )
Starlink 1255-1260 )
Starlink 1262-1268 )
Starlink 1272-1293 )
Starlink 1295-1313 )
Starlink 1316-1319 )
Mar 21 1707 OneWeb 0018 )
Soyuz-2-1B/Fregat Baykonur Comms 20A S45424 433 x 463 x
87.4
OneWeb 0019 )
OneWeb 0027
)
OneWeb 0029 )
OneWeb 0031
)
OneWeb 0034 )
OneWeb 0037
)
OneWeb 0042 )
OneWeb 0046
)
OneWeb 0050 )
OneWeb 0055
)
OneWeb 0060 )
OneWeb 0061
)
OneWeb 0063 )
OneWeb 0064
)
OneWeb 0066-0069)
OneWeb
0080-0082)
OneWeb 0085-0088)
OneWeb 0090
)
OneWeb 0092-0096)
OneWeb 0098 )
Mar
24 0343 Yaogan-30 06 zu 01 xing ) Chang Zheng 2C Xichang
Sigint 21A S45460 591 x 602 x 35.0
Yaogan-30 06 zu 02 xing
) Sigint 21B S45461 591 x 602 x
35.0
Yaogan-30 06 zu 03 xing
) Sigint 21C S45462 591 x 602 x
35.0
Mar 26 2018 AEHF 6 ) Atlas V 551 Canaveral
SLC41 Comms 22B S4546 11366 x 35311 x 13.7
TDO 2
) Calib 22A S45464
201 x 35459 x 26.5
Apr 9 0805 Soyuz MS-16
Soyuz-2-1a Baykonur LC31 Spaceship 23A S45476 217 x 389 x
51.8
Apr 9 1115 Nusantara Dua Chang Zheng 3B
Xichang Comms F03 F01522 -1070?x 200?x 27.5?
Table of
Recent Suborbital Launches
-----------------------------------
The
Zulfiqar missile launched on Mar 28 by the Houthis in Yemen is a
liquid
propellant Scud-type vehicle similar to the Burkan, and is not
related to
Iran's solid fuel rocket of the same name. I am denoting it
as Zulfiqar (YE)
to maintain the distinction.
Date UT Payload/Flt Name Launch
Vehicle Site Mission Apogee/km Target
Feb
12 USN RVs Trident D5LE USS Maine, Pacific
Test 1000? Wake Island
Feb 16 USN RVs Trident
D5LE USS Maine, Pacific Test 1000? Wake Island
Mar 20
0830 C-HGB STARS Kauai LC42 Test
500? Pacific
Mar 28 2020? HE RV Zulfiqar (YE)
Sadah? Weapon 150? Riyadh
Apr 15 1500? Nudol' dummy
KV? Nudol' Plesetsk Test 500? Laptev
Sea
-------------------------------------------------------------------------.
|
Jonathan McDowell | |
|
Somerville MA 02143 | inter : planet4589 at gmail |
|
USA | twitter: @planet4589
|
|
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