Jonathan's Space Report
No. 713 2015 Jul 3 Somerville, MA
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International Space Station
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Expedition 44 began at 1020 UTC Jun 11 with Commander Gennadiy Padalka
and flight engineers Mikhail Kornienko and Scott Kelly.

On May 27 the SSRMS arm was used to move the PMM Leonardo storage module from
the Unity (Node 1) nadir port to the Tranquility (Node 3) forward port.
Unberthing was at 0946 UTC and berthing was complete at 1308 UTC. This is part
of a major reconfiguration of the station to support future commercial crew
and cargo spaceships.

Tranquility now has the Cupola at the nadir port, PMA-3 at the aft port, and
Leonardo at the forward port. The zenith port is vacant.
Here 'aft' and 'forward' are relative to the ISS,
a convention I find confusing as Node 3 is at 90 degrees to the other nodes,
so corresponding ports on Nodes 1 and 2 have different nomenclature.

Soyuz TMA-15 undocked on Jun 11 at 1020 UTC with Anton Shkaplerov in command
and Terry Virts, Samantha Cristoforetti as flight engineers.
The spacecraft landed at 1343 UTC in Kazakhstan.

Dragon CRS-7 was launched on Jun 28, but the Falcon 9 failed close to the end of stage 1 burn
and was destroyed. Initial indications are that an overpressure in the second stage during
second stage initialization 2 min 19s after launch, at 45 km altitude, caused it to blow apart.

CRS-7 was lost in the Atlantic, with its cargo which included 8 Flock 1f cubesats,
the IDA-1 docking adapter, spacesuit EMU 3017, and the second NORS oyxgen recharge
tank (the first one fried on Orb-3 last year).

Progress M-28M was launched successfuly on Jul 3, carrying critical supplies
for the ISS. Docking is scheduled for Jul 5. This launch used the older Soyuz-U rocket
instead of the newer Soyuz-2-1a which ran into problems on the Progress M-27M launch.
Progress M-28M is ISS flight 60P, spacecraft factory no. 428.

Ariane
-------

Ariane 5 launched two communication satellites on May 27. DirecTV-15 is a 6205 kg Eurostar
3000 for DirecTV; SKYM-1 is an Orbital Geostar-2 with a mass of 3182 kg for Sky Mexico,
a joint venture of DirecTV and Mexico's Televisa. By Jul 2 both satellites were
in geostationary, at 66.8W and 78.8W respectively.

X-37B
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The X-37B has been found by hobbyist observers in a 309 x 322 km x 38.0 deg orbit.
The ULTRASAT cubesats are in 355 x 700 km x 55.0 deg orbits.

AV-054 Cubesats
---------------

The LightSail-1 cubesat went into safemode a few days after launch
but rebooted on May 30. Its solar panels were deployed on Jun 3 and the solar
sail was unfurled on Jun 7 at 1947 UTC. The satellite reentered on Jun 14.

There were of course 10 cubesats on the AV-054 launch, not 9 - I listed them all
individually but then ran out of fingers somehow when totalling them.

Kosmos-2505
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On Jun 5 Russia launched the Kobal't-M No. 565 spy satellite, given the
codename Kosmos-2505. The initial orbit of 177 x 285 km x 81.4 deg was
boosted on Jun 8 and 13 to 203 x 264 km. The Kobal't-M is the latest
version of the 1970s era Yantar' spy satellite series and returns its
main section, with film and camera, to Earth at the end of its flight.
It also carries two small ejectable film canisters which can return some
data to Earth during the mission.

Kosmos-2506
-----------

On Jun 23 Russia launched the Persona-1 No. 3 spy satellite. The
Persona-1 satellites are built by TsSKB-Progress (Samara) and carry
electro-optical imaging cameras. According to a report by Anatoly Zak, this third
vehicle will return its data via an optical communications link to an
unidentified GEO satellite. The satellite manuevered from elliptical
to circular orbit on Jun 28.

Vega
----

Arianespace's Vega VV05 mission placed the European Space Agency's Sentinel 2A
visible/IR Earth observing satellite in a 787 x 788 km sun-synchronous orbit
on Jun 23. The visible camera has 10 metre resolution and a 290 km swath.
The Vega is an Italian-build small launch vheicle with three solid stages
and a liquid fourth stage, the AVUM.

The AVUM upper stage was meant to deorbit itself, according to the
Arianespace press kit, but instead ended up as space junk in a 400 x 783
km orbit from which it should reenter in a few years.

Gaofen 8
--------

China launched a new high resolution imaging satellite on Jun 26. The previous
two Gaofen satellites, 1 and 2, were civilian operated and extensively described
before launch; GF-8 is also described as for civil use but in contrast was not discussed
prior to the launch, and may actually be used for military imaging.

Philae
-------

On comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the Rosetta lander, Philae, awoke
from hibernation on Jun 14 and began sending data back to Earth.
Rosetta remains in orbit around the comet.


Cassini
-------

Cassini made a 516 km altitude flyby of Dione (Saturn IV) on Jun 16 at 2012 UTC.

New Horizons
------------

On Jun 25 New Horizons was 23 million km from Pluto, closing at 1 million km per day.
Encounter day is Jul 14.


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

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 309 x 322 x 38.0
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?
May 27 2116 DirecTV-15 ) Ariane 5ECA Kourou ELA3 Comms 26A S40663 258 x 35773 x 4.4
SKYM-1 ) Comms 26B S40664 261 x 35738 x 4.4
Jun 5 1523 Kosmos-2505 Soyuz-2-1A Plesetsk LC43/4 Imaging 27A S40667 177 x 285 x 81.4
Jun 23 0151 Sentinel 2A Vega Kourou ZLV Imaging 28A S40697 787 x 788 x 98.7 1030LT SSO
Jun 23 1644 Kosmos-2506 Soyuz-2-1B Plesetsk LC43/4 Imaging 29A S40699 706 x 725 x 98.3 0840LT SSO
Jun 26 0622 Gaofen 8 Chang Zheng 4B Taiyuan Imaging 30A S40701 471 x 481 x 97.3 1330LT SSO
Jun 28 1421 Dragon CRS-7 Falcon 9 v1.1 Canaveral SLC40 Cargo F02 F01448 -6250?x 45?x 51.6
Jul 3 0455 Progress M-28M Soyuz-U Baykonur LC1 Cargo 31A

Table of Recent (suborbital) Launches
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Flight NASA 36.300US, the fifth mission of the SDO EVE Calibration payload,
was launched May 21 but the rocket was destroyed about 5 km up; the payload
was recovered by parachute.

On Jun 6 Asnar Allah forces in Sa'dah, Yemen launched a Scud (possibly
North Korean model Hwasong 6) at King Khaled Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
The missile was reportedly intercepted by two US Patriot missiles. Another
Scud was launched on Jun 30.


On Jun 26 the US Missile Defense Agency launched a target missile, probably from
or near Kauai, for a test of the Aegis Ashore system. The target missile is reported
to have malfunctioned; it's not clear what the achieved apogee is and I'm not including
it in the list below.

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

Apr 15 RV Ghauri Tilla?,Pakistan Test 400?
Apr 16 0422 Agni RV Agni III Chandipur,India Test 350?
Apr 18 1101 NASA 46.008UO Terrier Imp.Malemute Wallops, Virginia Education 174?
Apr 23 0735 TEXUS 51 VSB-30 Kiruna,Sweden Micrograv 261
Apr 27 0455 TEXUS 52 VSB-30 Kiruna,Sweden Micrograv 255
May 2 0830 NASA 36.292UH Black Brant IX White Sands,New Mex. XR Astron 272
May 20 1037 GT212GM Minuteman 3 Vandenberg,Calif. Test 1300?
Jun 3 RV Hyunmoo 2 Anhueng, S Korea Test 150
Jun 6 Warhead Hwasong 6? Sa'dah, Yemen Weapon 80?
Jun 6 CTV-01 SM-3-IIA San Nicolas I.,Calif. Test 150?
Jun 25 1000 NASA 41.113UO Terrier Imp.Orion Wallops, Virginia Education 118?
Jun 30 Warhead Hwasong 6? Sa'dah, Yemen Weapon 80?

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