FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1991
1991 - 2238.PDF
SPACEFLIGHT Sharman mission faced post-launch abortion BY TIM FURNISS The Soyuz TM12 mission, launched from Baikonur on 18 May with two Soviet cosmo nauts and the UK's first astro naut, Helen Sharman, was almost aborted on reaching orbit. Sharman has revealed in an interview with Flight Interna tional that, during the nine- minute launch sequence, ground control monitored a continuous Imm/min increase in cabin pres sure, and were prepared to order an immediate emergency depres- surisation and return to Earth when TM12 reached orbit. The onset of weightlessness is believed to have freed whatever obstacle caused the pressure rise, however, and the cabin pressure reverted to normal. The cabin is pressurised by atmos pheric air at normal atmospheric pressure. Sharman and her colleagues, Sergei Krikalyov and Anatoli Artsebarski, were unaware of the problem during launch — al though cabin instruments moni tor pressure. The crew moni tored the cabin pressure before taking off their helmets and proceeding with a normal two- day flight to rendezvous and dock with the Mir space station. Because TM12 was to dock at a forward port at Mir following a rendezvous antenna problem at the aft port, mission managers considered a manual docking to be mandatory and planned to replace the rookie, Artsebarski, with his experienced backup, Alexander Volkov. Under usual Soviet practice, this would have meant TM12 would also be flown by the other backups, the UK's Tim Mace and flight engineer Alexander Kaleri. Instead, it was decided to at tempt a routine automatic dock ing using the dual-radar Kurs system; but when one of the radars failed, Artsebarski had to make a manual docking. Artsebarski and Krikalyov jet tisoned the Progress M8 tanker craft from Mir on 16 August. The next mission to Mir, by Soyuz TM13, crewed by Volkov, Takhtar Aubakirov and Austrian Franz Fibek, is scheduled for 2 October. • A US instrument, the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS), has been launched aboard a Soviet Meteor 3 satel lite. The launch of the Tsyklon booster from Plesetsk on 15 August was "the biggest US- Soviet project since the Soyuz- Apollo mission in 1975", says Tass. • NEWS IN BRIEF ZENIT DELAYED The 27 July launch from the Baikonur cosmodrome of the first Zenit booster to fly in 15 months was postponed "at the last minute", according to the Soviet newspaper, Red Star. The booster carried an elec tronic intelligence satellite — described by the Soviets as "...a military technology satel lite to verify the fulfilment of disarmament treaty commit ments". The last Zenit ex ploded above the launch pad, 3s after lift off, on 4 October, 1990. GALILEO FAILURE The cooling manoeuvre per formed by NASA's Galileo spacecraft earlier this month failed to release the ribs of the high-gain antenna which ap pear to have been bound by friction to the antenna's con trol tower. Another manoeu vre will be performed in December when Galileo is further from the sun and the temperatures are lower. Gali leo is scheduled to fly by the asteroid Gaspra on 29 Octo ber. The high-gain antenna is not essential for this part of the mission, but it certainly will be vital to the spacecraft's success when it reaches the planet Jupiter in December 1995. SPACELAB D2 PAYLOAD TRAIN COMPLETE The payload train of experiment racks for the German-funded Spacelab D2 mission aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour STS55 has been completed at the DASA Space Systems MBB plant at Bremen. The racks will be shipped to the Kennedy Space Center later this year. The nine-day Spacelab D2 mission, scheduled for February 1993, will be dedicated to microgravity research, materials sciences and biotechnol ogy experiments for German, European Space Agency and US users. The Endeavour will be manned by seven crew, including two German payload scientists who will be selected in October from Ulrich Walter, Gerhard Thiele, Hans Wilhelm Schlegel, and Renate Brummer. NASA sets up ten-month NLS study Lockheed Missiles and Space, McDonnell Douglas and TRW have been selected by- NASA to complete a ten-month, $500,00*Q study to support the definition , of the new National Launch System (NLS). NASA and the US Air Force have been studying various op tions for vehicles and engine systems for the past three years under the Advanced Launch Sys tem and Shuttle C programmes. The NLS is seen by NASA as a basic core vehicle to which modifications, such as strap-on boosters, can be added to suit individual launch requirements. The vehicle could provide the heavy lift capability to support Space Station Freedom. The US Government expects full-scale development oi the NLS by 1995, with a first flight at the turn of the century. Lockheed's NLS director, Jim Madewell, says: "A new launch system is required because all of the launch capacity the USA now depends on is derived from ballistic missiles of the 1970s. The fundamental objective of NLS is to minimize the opera tional problems." • Damage hits switched-on Shuttle Two of the three fuel cells on the Space Shuttle Atlantis were left operating after its land ing at the Kennedy Space Center on 11 August, causing as much as $7 million in damage, says NASA. A board of inquiry has been set up. The cells have been returned to the International Fuel Cells division of United Technolgies, and new ones installed ready for the Shuttle's flight in November. The incident occured when an emergency power-down of the orbiter was ordered once the crew had egressed, alter engi neers noticed a decreased volt age in the power plants. Two cells were inadvertently left connected to their power buses, because the power-down was not provided with the usual ground electrical services and there was insufficient internal power to complete the cell shut down process. The cells contin ued to operate unnoticed on low power. • The Countdown Demonstra tion Test for the STS48 Discov ery mission, scheduled for 12 September, took place on 20 August. • 12 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 28 August - 3 September, 1991
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
