Jonathan's Space Report

Jun 12 1990 (no.42)
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Launch of STS-38/Atlantis is due for early July. Atlantis has
been transferred to the VAB for mating with the STS-38
stack.

Launch of STS-35/Columbia has been rescheduled for August 9.
The stack was rolled back to the VAB on Jun 12. The STS-41
SRB stack was rolled out to pad 39B to make room for it.

Orbital verification of the Hubble Space Telescope and the ROSAT
observatory continue.  ROSAT systems appear to be working well.  HST
continues to have some problems; the solar array masts flex several cm
when exposed to sunlight, and a guidance computer is insufficiently
shielded from radiation in the South Atlantic Anomaly.  These problems
should eventually be correctable in software.  Pointing stability is at
the milliarcsec level during night portions of the orbit. 

Anatoli Solov'yov (Komandir) and Aleksandr Balandin (Bortinzhener)
continue in orbit aboard the Mir complex.  The Soyuz TM-9 transport is
currently at the station.  The Kristall module docked on Jun 10 at the
forward port after a postponement of several days due to worries about a
thruster.  Solov'yov and Balandin have been in space for 120 days. 

The last Delta I rocket was launched from Canaveral on Jun 12.
The Delta model 4925 carried an Indian communications and
weather satellite, INSAT 1D, into orbit.

The second Titan 4 was launched from Canaveral on Jun 8.
Space News reports that it went into a 57 degree orbit;
if so, the payload is probably a National Reconnaissance
Office payload, either a LACROSSE radar imaging satellite
or an advanced KENNAN digital optical imaging satellite. 

(c) 1990 Jonathan McDowell