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Aviation History
1989
1989 - 0071.PDF
Phobos 2 in trouble The Soviet Union's Phobos 2 Mars probe could be having problems, continuing the nation's poor exploration record of the planet. Phobos 2 is due to enter orbit around Mars later this month, and to explore the Martian moon Phobos in April. The meeting of the inter national team of principal investigators for the Phobos experiment, originally sched uled for this month, was first deferred to February then delayed indefinitely, amid reports that the spacecraft has suffered equipment failures. Tass admits that Phobos 2 has experienced "isolated malfunctions," and claims that the rest of the programme can be "carried out in full". US analysts claim that two of the three Bulgarian cameras on board Phobos have failed, and that data transmissions from the spacecraft have been switched from high to low rate. Contact was lost with the sister craft, Phobos 1, last September, when an engineer steered the spacecraft's antenna away from the Earth. Excluding Phobos 2, all of the Soviet Union's 16 attempts to explore Mars since 1960, except Mars 5 in 1974, have failed. China launches 25 th satellite China launched its 25th satellite, at 2040hr Peking time on December 22, aboard its fourth Long March 3 booster from Xichang. The STW communications satellite entered geostationary transfer orbit and was later injected into a geostationary one, reaching station 110-5° East on Decem ber 30. STW is the fourth commu nications satellite to be launched by China, and is iden tical to the satellite launched on March 7 last year, China says. For the first time, the launch was witnessed by visitors from the USA, France, West Germany, Pakistan, Iran, Austria, Brazil, and Hong Kong. China inaugurated a new rocket launching site on Hainan Island on December 25. The first launch was of the first of four planned sub-orbital sound ing rockets, Weaver Girl 1, named after a legendary- Chinese figure, during a two- week period of upper atmos pheric research. It deployed its recoverable payload at T+2min 10 seconds and made a research flight lasting two and a half hours before falling to the Earth 64km from Hainan. Soviets show MMU Recently, Soviet officials at the Baikonur Cosmodrome showed for the first time the manned manoeuvring unit. Unlike the Nasa "flying armchair", the Soviet version, which operates using compressed air, is almost as tall as the cosmonaut. The hand controllers are mounted on special sleeves which can be of different lengths to accommodate a cosmonaut's arm length. The MMU will be flown for the first time next spring by Alexander Serebrov, the flight engineer of Soyuz TMB. Progress 39 docks with Mir by Tim Furniss The unmanned supply craft Progress 39 docked at the Mir space station at'0855hr Moscow time, on December 25, two days after its launch on an SL-4 booster from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Progress docked with the Kvant astrophysics module at the rear of Mir, its docking port having been vacated by Soyuz TM7, which made a standard move over to the front of Mir after the departure of TM6. The tanker, the 15th to be launched to Mir since March 1986, delivered fuel, water, equipment, and mail to the resi dent cosmonauts, Alexander Volkov, Sergie Krikalev and Dr Valeri Polyakov, who expect to be in orbit until late April. • The three-hour delay in the return of Soyuz TM6 on Decernber 21, with the record- breaking cosmonauts Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov and Frenchman Jean-Loup Chre tien, was due "to the faulty interaction of some of the new software with the old package of programmes in the spacecraft's onboard computer," says deputy flight director Viktor Blagov. Following the problem experienced by Soyuz TM5 last September, when an infrared horizon scanner failed to func tion correctly during orien tation procedures before retro fire, engineers reprogrammed TM6's computer to prevent the horizon scanner from being confused by unusual sun angles. TM6 separated from Mir at 0632hr Moscow time on December 21, with the retrofire planned for 0900hr and a land ing 48min later. In the light of the TM5 saga, the Soviets reverted to an earlier procedure and kept the orbital module attached to the descent module, to give more room for crew and consumables should a delay occur to retrofire. The main computer signalled that it was overloaded and "cut out^ the landing programme," says Blagov. After consulting with the Kaliningrad control centre, the crew switched to a backup computer. TM6 landed in northern Kazakhstan at 1257hr Moscow time. New customer for Titan Martin Marietta has received two new commercial launch contracts for its Titan expendable launch vehicle. Two Hughes HS-601 commu nications satellites will be deliv ered into orbit for Hughes. The Hughes HS-601 has also been selected by the US Navy as its follow-on for the Leasat- Syncom 5. Hughes' selection of Titan may improve Marietta's chances of launching some of these new military commu nications satellites. The first commercial Titan will be launched this summer. FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, 14 January 1989 13
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