Jonathan's Space Report
No. 239 1995 May 4 Cambridge, MA
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A quiet week...
Shuttle
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Atlantis was rolled out to pad 39A on Apr 26 for mission STS-71;
Discovery was rolled from the Orbiter Processing Facility to the Vehicle
Assembly Building on May 3 and mated to the external tank and solid
boosters for mission STS-70 the same day. It has now been decided to fly
Discovery before Atlantis. Discovery will carry a TDRS communications
satellite into orbit.
Mir
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Launch of the GFZ-1 satellite from Mir, described in the last issue,
was at 1912 UT on Apr 19.
Recent Launches
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Erratum: The ERS-2 launch time was 0144 UT, not 1344 UT; I misunderstood
the information provided by Arianespace's PAO.
Contact with the Clementine space probe in solar orbit has now been
fully regained. Not enough fuel remains for an asteroid encounter,
so a burn was due to be made last week to slow the probe's drift
away from Earth to maximize communications time.
Geostationary satellite movements
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Here are the positions of the satellites launched so far this year:
Intelsat 704 66.0E
UHF F/O F4 177.9W
Himawari 5 159.7E
Intelsat 705 56.2W
Brasilsat B2 60.8W
Hot Bird 1 12.5E
AMSC-1 101.8W drifting 0.1E/day
Table of Recent Launches
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Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Apr 3 1348 Orbcomm 1 ) Pegasus L1011 VAFB/PAWA Comsat 17A
Orbcomm 2 ) Comsat 17B
Microlab 1 ) Science 17C
Apr 5 1116 'Ofeq-3 Shaviyt Palamchim Technol. 18A
Apr 7 2347 AMSC-1 Atlas IIA Canaveral LC36A Comsat 19A
Apr 9 1934 Progress M-27 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 20A
Apr 19 1912 GFZ-1 - Mir Geodesy 8617JE
Apr 21 0144 ERS-2 Ariane 40 Kourou ELA2 Rem Sensing 21A
Reentries
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Apr 3 Kosmos-2137 Reentered
Apr 4 Kosmos-2290 Deorbited over Pacific
Current Shuttle Processing Status
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Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due
OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 3 STS-73 Sep 21
OV-103 Discovery LC39B STS-70 Jun 8
OV-104 Atlantis LC39A STS-71 Jun 19-24? Under review
OV-105 Endeavour OPF Bay 1 STS-69 Jul 20
ML/SRB/ET/OV stacks
ML1/
ML2/RSRM-44/ET-71/OV-103 LC39B STS-70
ML3/RSRM-45/ET-70/OV-104 LC39A STS-71
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| Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 |
| Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | |
| Astrophysics | |
| 60 Garden St, MS4 | |
| Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@urania.harvard.edu |
| USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu |
| |
| JSR: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/QEDT/jcm/jsr.html |
! ftp://sao-ftp.harvard.edu/pub/jcm/space/news/news.* |
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