Jonathan's Space Report
No. 323 1997 May 29 Cambridge, MA
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shuttle and Mir
---------------
STS-84: Atlantis undocked from the Mir station at 0104 UTC on May 22.
The Orbiter fired its engines to drop out of orbit at 1233 UTC on
May 24, and landed at the Kennedy Space Center's runway 33 at 1327 UTC.
Jerry Linenger returned to Earth aboard Atlantis, leaving Mike Foale
as the NASA resident on Mir. The next Shuttle flight is STS-94,
due for launch in July as a reflight of STS-83.
Recent Launches
---------------
A Russian military satellite was destroyed on May 20 shortly after
launch from Baykonur. The Ukrainian built Zenit-2 launch vehicle failed
48 seconds after launch when its engines shut down at an altitude of 15
km and it impacted 28 km from the launch site. The satellite was
probably a Tselina-2 signals intelligence satellite, and would have
been named Kosmos-2344 after reaching orbit.
The Thor 2 comsat was launched on May 21. Thor 2 is a Hughes HS-376
class comsat for Telenor of Norway and will provide television services
in Scandinavia. It will supplement the Thor 1 satellite, which bought
in 1992 from British Satellite Broadcasting and was originally known as
Marcopolo 2. Launch was by a Delta 7925, the second successful Delta
mission since the January failure.
International Launch Services carried out the launch of Loral Skynet's
Telstar 5 satellite from Baykonur on May 24. The Krunichev Proton-K
rocket placed Telstar 5 and the Energiya Blok-DM-4 upper stage in
parking orbit. Telstar 5 is a Space Systems/Loral FS-1300 class comsat.
Loral Skynet is the successor to AT&T's Skynet satellite system.
Table of Recent Launches
------------------------
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL.
DES.
Apr 4 1647 DMSP 5D-2 S-14 Titan 23G Vandenberg SLC4W Weather 12A
Apr 4 1920 Columbia/STS-83) Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 13A
MSL-1 Spacelab )
Apr 6 1604 Progress M-34 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 14A
Apr 9 0858 Kosmos-2340 Molniya-M Plesetsk LC16/2 EarlyWarn 15A
Apr 16 2309 Thaicom 3 ) Ariane 44LP Kourou ELA2 Comsat 16A
BSAT 1a ) 16B
Apr 17 1303 Kosmos-2341 Kosmos-3M Plesetsk LC132/1 Navsat 17A
Apr 21 1159 Minisat-01 ) Pegasus XL L-1011, Gando Technology 18A
Celestis ) Burial 18B
Apr 25 0549 GOES 10 Atlas I Canaveral LC36B Weather 19A
May 5 1455 Iridium SV004 ) Delta 7920 Vandenberg SLC2W Comsat 20E
Iridium SV005 ) Comsat 20D
Iridium SV006 ) Comsat 20C
Iridium SV007 ) Comsat 20B
Iridium SV008 ) Comsat 20A
May 11 1617 DFH-3 CZ-3A Xichang LC2 Comsat 21A
May 14 0033 Kosmos-2342 Molniya-M Plesetsk LC43/4 EarlyWarn 22A
May 15 0808 Atlantis STS-84 Shuttle Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 23A
May 15 1210 Kosmos-2343 Soyuz-U Baykonur LC31 Recon 24A
May 20 0707 - Zenit-2 Baykonur LC45 Sigint FTO
May 21 2239 Thor 2 Delta 7925 Canaveral LC17A Comsat 25A
May 24 1700 Telstar 5 Proton/DM-4 Baykonur Comsat 26A
Current Shuttle Processing Status
____________________________________________
Orbiters Location Mission Launch Due
OV-102 Columbia OPF Bay 1 STS-94 Jul 1
OV-103 Discovery OPF Bay 2 STS-85 Aug 7
OV-104 Atlantis OPF Bay 3 STS-84
OV-105 Endeavour VAB
MLP/SRB/ET/OV stacks
MLP1/RSRM-62/ET VAB Bay 1 STS-94
MLP2/
MLP3/
.-------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Jonathan McDowell | phone : (617) 495-7176 |
| Harvard-Smithsonian Center for | |
| Astrophysics | |
| 60 Garden St, MS6 | |
| Cambridge MA 02138 | inter : jcm@urania.harvard.edu |
| USA | jmcdowell@cfa.harvard.edu |
| |
| JSR: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/QEDT/jcm/space/jsr/jsr.html |
| Back issues: ftp://sao-ftp.harvard.edu/pub/jcm/space/news/news.* |
'-------------------------------------------------------------------------'