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Aviation History
1989
1989 - 3854.PDF
TECHNICAL SPACEFLIGHT SDI test order for Space Data launchers BY TIM FURNISS Space Data Corporation, a di vision of Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC), has been awarded a $25 million contract to design, produce and launch up to 20 sub-orbital launch vehicles to provide spaceflight testing of advanced sensor and interceptor technologies for the Strategic De fense Initiative Office (SDIO). The launch vehicles will be based on some of the 30-plus sounding rockets that have been developed by the corporation and launched more than 600 times. These have carried pay- loads weighing up to 31,000kg to low altitudes and 2,720kg to an altitude of 900km. The multi-stage rockets will be built in configurations that will depend on the mission they will fly. Candidate Vehicles are the Sergeant, with a Minuteman third stage as the upper stage and the Prospector, which is based on the Castor IV. Other vehicles include the Talos Castor, Starbird and Aries. The rationale behind the con tract is to provide a single source for SDIO experiments which will originate from several research agencies, liaising with Space Data and its subcontractor, Teledyne Brown Engineering, which will provide flight experi ment planning and other analyti cal services. Launches will be from Cape Canaveral, Florida and White Sands, New Mexico. • NATO IV payload delivered to BAe The communications payload for the first Nato IV satellite has been delivered from Marconi Space Systems to British Aero space. The satellite will be launched on the first commercial Delta II 7925 vehicle from Cape Canaveral in December 1990. Nato IV is the first Nato sat ellite to be built outside the USA. Two satellites were ordered from BAe/Marconi in 1988 at a value of £100 million, to replace the ageing Nato III satellites, the last of which was launched in 1977, and to provide services into the next century. The Marconi pay- load includes military SHF and UHF transponders which will serve a wide range of Nato Earth stations. The payload is virtually identi cal to that of the Skynet IV satellites, the first of which was launched by Ariane 4 in Decem ber'1988. The second, designated Skynet 4A, was scheduled to be launched on the first commercial Titan from Cape Canaveral on 7 December. • Thailand signs up Asiasat for $100m domestic communication satellite Asiasat, the Hong Kong-based xVinternational satellite con sortium, has concluded a $100 million deal with Thailand to provide a domestic communica tions satellite service. Instead of providing a satellite for exclusive use Thailand may lease up to half the transponder capacity or the Asiasat 1 satellite. Originally, it was to have pro vided domestic communications services to China as well as other Eastern and Far Eastern countries. China appears to have adopted a new "closed-door policy" and may revert to its original plan of developing a national domestic satellite system. South Korea plans to build a domestic communications satellite to pro cure an international launch before the end of the century. It could also be interested in avail able capacity on Asiasat 1. • Juno team Star City bound Funds mount for Juno mission Helen Sharman and Maj Tim Mace, the two Britons se lected to train for what may be the first commercial manned spaceflight in history, have ar rived at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmo naut Training Centre at Star City, near Moscow. They will train for 18 months for the Project Juno mission in 1991. Commercial sponsorship for the £16 million ($10.3 million) project has begun with TV rights sold to UK commercial TV: sponsorship by British Aero space, Memorex and Interflora will provide about £2.5 million of the funding. Backing for a mission—described as the first by a Briton in space—has been threatened by the NASA selec tion of a British-born astronaut to fly a Shuttle mission in March 1991, a month before Juno. Space-bound Michael Foale is an American citizen but also holds a British passport. At Star City food technologist Sharman and helicopter pilot Mace, joined other would-be cosmonauts from Austria and Japan who are also training for commercial missions to Mir in 1991-92. Each Briton will be teamed with a Soviet commander and flight engineer in early 1991. One of the crews will be selected only weeks before lift-off to fly the Soyuz TM mission to the Mir space station, possibly as early as 12 April, 1991. • Granat launch success for Soviets The Soviet Union launched the Granat astronomical observatory satellite, on a Proton booster from Balknonur, on 2 December. Granat was placed in a parking orbit by the third stage and after one orbit, the Proton fourth stage ignited, placing it into its planned highly elliptical orbit, with an orbital period of about four days. The spacecraft is equipped with 2.3t of scientific equipment, including seven telescopes with more than 20 frequency band sensors, provided by Soviet, French, Bulgarian and Danish scientific groups. Granat is designed to study sources of X-ray and gamma ray emissions in space, from such phenomena as neutron stars, black holes, white dwarfs and the remains of supernova eruptions. The instruments are mounted on a rotating instrument point ing unit equipped with a "video- registration unit", says Tass. The spacecraft is designed to operate for eight months "but may con tinue to operate much longer". • NEWS IN BRIEF TURKSAT Turkey is expected to award the contract for the Turksat domestic satellite system in the next few weeks. Turksat is expected to be equipped with 16Ku band transponders for medium-power DBS and with X band Government coverage. The contract will go to either British Aerospace, Hughes or Aerospatiale. SOVIET PAYLOAD Canada's National Research Council's Dominion Astro- physical Observatory is to design and build a specialised computer for the Soviet RadioAstron satellite. The computer system will provide digital correlators to compare and combine signals from the 10m RadioAstronn dish-and- ground antennas. 26 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 13-19 December 1989
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