Jonathan's Space Report
No. 712 2015 May 21 Somerville, MA
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

International Space Station
---------------------------

Expedition 43 continues under the command of Terry Virts, with FE-1
Anton Shkaplerov and FE-2 Samantha Cristoforetti joined by FE-3 Gennadiy
Padalka, FE-4 Mikhail Kornienko and FE-5 Scott Kelly after the TMA-16M
(flight 42S) docking.

Dragon CRS-6 arrived at ISS on Apr 17. The SSRMS arm grappled CRS-6 at 1055 UTC
and berthed it on the Harmony module at 1329 UTC. The cargo ship was unberthed
again around 0929 UTC May 21, released at 1104 UTC and splashed down in the
Pacific at 1642 UTC May 21.

Among the cubesats on CRS-6 that will be deployed from the Kibo module
is Booz Allen Hamilton's Centennial-1. So far I've had no useful
response to my query to BAH about which of the company's many locations
built the satellite - do any of my readers know? Indications are that
the satellite may have been built at BAH's Herndon, Virginia operation
with program management at the Dayton, Ohio location.

Progress M-26M's engines were used to move the ISS out of the path of
some space debris on Apr 23 and (following a malfunction on May 16) made
an orbit reboost on May 18. The Progress M-25M cargo ship undocked from
the Pirs module at 0641 UTC Apr 25 and was deorbited on Apr 26, with
debris falling in the South Pacific at 1300 UTC.

Progress M-27 was launched on Apr 28; however, the Soyuz-2-1a third
stage did not shut down correctly and damaged the spacecraft during
separation. 44 debris objects were tracked, 20 of them being cataloged
(all reentered by May 7). Limited telemetry was obtained from the
Progress, but Russian mission control was unable to control the
spacecraft, which was found to be spinning. The damaged spacecraft
reentered over the South Pacific off the SW coast of Chile at 0220 UTC
May 8. I am scoring the launch as 0.30 success (orbit reached but fatal
payload separation problem).

Ariane
-------

Ariane 5 launched two communication satellites on Apr 26. Thor 7, a
Loral 1300 satellite, will provide broadcast services for Norway's
Telenor, including a Ka-band payload dedicated to maritime and Antarctic
communications. Sicral 2 provides secure communications for the Italian
and French armed forces. Both satellites have raised their orbits to GEO; there is
no tracking data for Sicral available. Sicral is a Thales/Telespazio Spacebus
4000 satellite.

SpaceX Turkmen launch
-----------------------

A SpaceX Falcon 9 placed a communications satellite in geostationary
transfer orbit on Apr 27. The satellite has the baroque name of
TurkmenAlem52E/MonacoSat, which requires some unpacking. The satellite
was built by Thales Alenia Space in Cannes and is a Spacebus 4000C2
model with a 4700 kg launch mass. It is owned by the Turkmenistan
National Space Agency and the Turkmen Ministry of Communications, which
will operate 26 Ku-band transponders, and will be stationed at the 52E
position - hence the first component of the name. The GEO orbital slot
is assigned to Monaco and its GEO telecom operator Space Systems
International; Monaco has a further 12 Ku-band transponders on the
satellite for the MonacoSat portion of the payload, which will be
operated by the SES company on its behalf.

Mexsat-1
--------

Mexsat-1, a Boeing 702-GEM satellite for the Mexican SCT (communications ministry), was
lost on May 16 when the Proton launch vehicle suffered another failure.
Malfunction of the third stage vernier engine 8 minutes into flight led to a premature
shutdown and impact of stage 3, Briz-M and payload in the Chita region between
Lake Baikal and the Chinese border.

X-37B
------

On May 20 an Atlas V orbited an X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle into an unknown orbit,
probably around 400 km and 40 deg inclination like previous missions.
There are two X-37Bs and for the first time the USAF has not announced which
of them is flying the mission. In contrast there is somewhat more openness than
before about the payload, which includes an AFRL ion engine test and a NASA
materials exposure experiment.

After releasing the X-37B the Centaur AV-054 rocket stage reignited to
reach a 355 x 700 km x 55-57 deg orbit and at around 1700 UTC released a
set of 9 cubesats. Centaur then made a third burn to deorbit itself over
the Indian Ocean. Detailed orbital data for this mission are not yet
available.

The 9 cubesats are:
The USS Langley, a 3U cubesat from the US Naval Academy (UNSA) testing out an IP link
to the satellite's computer which hosts a Unix webserver.
ParkinsonSat-1 is a 1.5U cubesat from USNA hosting the USN SCP/ODTML buoy communications payload
and an amateur radio payload.
BRICSAT-P is another USNA 1.5U cubesat, built in collaboration with George Washington Univ.,
testing an electric micropropulsion system.
Aerocube-8A and 8B, from the Aerospace Corporation, are two 1.5U cubesats testing an ion-electrospray
propulsion system and carbon nanotube materials.
GEARRS-2, the second 3U Globalstar Risk Reduction satellite from startup Near Space Launch (a Taylor U. spinoff)
with AFRL to demo cubesat data relay via the Globalstar system.
O/C-1 to O/C-3, three 3U Optical Cubesats sponsored by NRO and
built by Cal Poly as targets for space surveillance calibration. It's unclear who the owners of the satellite are.
LightSail-A, the Planetary Society's 3U cubesat with a solar sail deployment experiment.


Cassini
-------

The Cassini probe made a 2721 km flyby of Titan at 2252 UTC May 7. The probe is
now in a 188700 x 2428000 km x 0.4 deg equatorial Saturn orbit.

Erratum: last issue's entry should have read:
The Cassini probe made a 2275 km flyby of Titan at 1430 UTC Mar 16. The probe is
now in a 276000 x 3164000 km x 0.3 deg equatorial Saturn orbit.


Procyon
--------

The Japanese PROCYON mission's plan to perform an Earth swingby followed by flyby of
asteroid 2000 DP107 has been abandoned following malfunction of its ion engine.
The probe, in solar orbit, may continue to make scientific measurements with its
ultraviolet camera. Procyon was originally in a 0.9 x 1.1 AU x 6.8 deg solar orbit
but I'm not sure how much this was changed by its 3 months of ion engine operation.


Table of Recent (orbital) Launches
----------------------------------
Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL. Catalog Perigee Apogee Incl Notes
km km deg

Apr 14 2010 Dragon CRS-6 Falcon 9 v1.1 Canaveral SLC40 Cargo 21A S40588 205 x 360 x 51.6
Apr 26 2000 Thor 7 ) Ariane 5 ECA Kourou ELA3 Comms 22A S40613 35778 x 35795 x 0.0 GEO 11.7W
Sicral 2 ) Comms 22B S40614 35780?x 35800?x 0.0 GEO?
Apr 27 2303 TurkmenAlem52E/ Falcon 9 v1.1 Canaveral SLC40 Comms 23A S40617 35784 x 35788 x 0.1 GEO 52.0E
MonacoSat
Apr 28 0709 Progress M-27M Soyuz-2-1a Baykonur LC31 Cargo 24A S40619 186 x 258 x 51.6
May 16 0547 Mexsat-1 Proton-M/Briz-M Baykonur LC200/39 Comms F01 F01446 -2000?x 160 x 50.5?
May 20 1505 X-37B OTV-4 ) Atlas V 501 Canaveral SLC40 Tech 25A S40651 400?x 400?x 40.0?
USS Langley ) Tech 25B S40652 350?x 700?x 55?
PSat-1 ) Comms 25D S40654 350?x 700?x 55?
BRICSat-P ) Tech 25E S40655 350?x 700?x 55?
GEARRS-2 ) Comms 25G S40657 350?x 700?x 55?
Aerocube-8a ) Tech 25J S40659 350?x 700?x 55?
Aerocube-8b ) Tech 25K S40660 350?x 700?x 55?
O/C-1 ) Calibration 25C S40653 350?x 700?x 55?
O/C-2 ) Calibration 25F S40656 350?x 700?x 55?
O/C-3 ) Calibration 25H S40658 350?x 700?x 55?
LightSail-A ) Tech 25L S40661 350?x 700?x 55?

Table of Recent (suborbital) Launches
----------------------------------

North Korea launched a ballistic missile from submerged platform, apparently on May 8.
The missile is thought to be derived from the Soviet R-27 and may be the same
as the missile known as 'Musudan' that has been tested in the past. However, South Korean
reports suggest the flight was a low altitude test only and did not reach space.

On May 2, NASA flight 36.292UH carried the University of Iowa's OGRESS,
a new X-ray grating spectrograph instrument, on a suborbital test flight
to observe the Cyg Loop supernova remnant.


Date UT Payload/Flt Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission Apogee/km

Apr 15 RV Ghauri Tilla? Test 400?
Apr 16 0422 Agni RV Agni III Chandipur Test 350?
Apr 18 1101 NASA 46.008UO Terrier Imp.Malemute Wallops Education 174?
May 2 0830 NASA 36.292UH Black Brant IX White Sands XR Astron 272

.-------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Jonathan McDowell | |
| Somerville MA 02143 | inter : planet4589 at gmail |
| USA | twitter: @planet4589 |