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Aviation History
1986
1986 - 1048.PDF
SPACEFLIGHT New Progress joins Mir MOSCOW Unmanned cargo craft Progress 26 docked with the Soviet Mir 1 space station on April 27. Launched on April 23, by SL-4 booster from Tyuratam, Progress 26 replaced Progress 25 which had undocked from Mir on April 20 after 30 days attached to the station, reports Tim Furniss. Progress 26 took more than twice the normal two days and one hour to dock with Mir, suggesting there may have been a problem, or that a new rendezvous and docking sequence was being evaluated. Cosmonauts Leonid Kizim and Vladimir Solovyov approached their 50th day in orbit on board Mir 1 at the beginning of May, as the station's orbit drew closer to that of the unmanned Salyut 7. Mir and Salyut will make their closest approach on May 23, according to Soviet space analyst Phillip Clark, but all it needs is a "small tweak and a rendezvous could be tomorrow", he adds. According to Clark, the Mir mockup shown to journalists visiting Star City earlier this month had a cylindrical module attached to its rear. This module also features in a painting of Mir by cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, published in the April issue of Ogonyek. The module did not appear, however, in the diagram of Mir displayed on the screens of the Soviet flight control centre visited by journalists. It is not clear, therefore, whether this module was part of Mir when the station was orbited on February 19, or whether it remains to be launched. The module could form additional living quar ters or an enlarged docking adaptor for a new and heavier manned ferry craft. Journal ists visiting Star City were told that Mir is "not quite ready for continuous oper ation. During a live press confer ence for Soviet and Western journalists at the Kaliningrad mission control, Kizim and Solovyov indicated that they planned still to be in space in September. Another unusual feature of Mir has been revealed by Mir cosmonauts Kizim and Solovyov last month indicated they planned still to be in orbit in September Soviet space analyst Rex Hall, who monitors Soviet radio broadcasts and media. Hall claims that Mir is equipped with a Shuttle-style remote manipulator which, appar ently, will be used to attach modules to the four radial docking ports at the front of Mir. Initially, these modules will dock either at the front or rear of Mir, to avoid destabilising the station, then be moved by remote manipulator to the appropriate docking port. Alternatively, the modules will be captured as they keep station with Mir. A similar operation will probably apply to the free-flying platform planned to operate with Mir, and for which the arm may have been specifically designed. The orbiting of Progress 26 was the 26th Soviet launch this year. There have been 19 single Cosmos launches plus one eight-up launch of military communication satellites. Two commu nications satellites, Raduga 18 and Molniya 3-28, plus Mir, Soyuz T15, and the two Progress tankers complete the list. In contrast, the rest of the world launched just eight satellites in the same period. Argos goes commercial TOULOUSE An organisation has been formed to develop and exploit France's Argos satellite-based environmental data collection system. Collecte Localisation Satellites (CLS) has been formed by the French space agency Cnes, the French sea research institute Ifremer, and banks and financial insti tutions. Since 1978, French-built equipment on US Noaa polar- orbiting weather satellites has been used to locate and collect environmental data from beacons on buoys, icebergs, offshore platforms, ships, balloons, and even migratory birds. A new accord signed by Cnes and Noaa on March 26 calls for Argos equipment with twice the capacity to be operational on three more satellites by the mid-1990s. According to Cnes there has been a rapid development in the use of Argos, with 900 beacons currently transmit ting—a number expected to double over the next few years. CLS has been created to exploit and market Argos. The organisation will re-equip the existing ground station at Toulouse and, via a US affili ate, establish in 1987 a second ground station near Washing ton D.C., to provide redun dancy and to serve the US market. CLS has been set up with an initial capital of FFr15 million ($2 million) and is owned 55 per cent by Cnes, 15 per cent by Ifremer, 21 per cent by French banks, and 9 per cent by French financial institutions. SPACESHOTS 26 Rock-well will this month complete integration of the Teal Ruby sensor experiment and its spacecraft, and then place the satellite in storage pending a resumption of Shuttle flights. The AFP-888 spacecraft and its Teal Ruby infrared mosaic focal-plane sensor will be among the first Shuttle payloads when flights resume. The experiment will attempt to detect and track aircraft from space. The spacecraft will be removed from storage six months before launch, says Rockwell. FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, 10 May 198*
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