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Aviation History
1997
1997 - 0072.PDF
SPACEFLIGHT NASA completes X-33 initial design review NASA AND LOCKHEED Martin's Skunk Works have completed the final preliminary- design review (PDR) for the X-33 Reusable Launch Vehicle technol ogy-demonstration programme. This PDR was for the operations and ground segment at Edwards AFB, California, where construc tion of a 1 OHa (2 5 acre) launch area will begin in October. The X-33, a half-scale demon strator of a potential RLV, is sched uled to have up to 15 sub-orbital flights during a ten-month period, starting in March 1999. Launched vertically from Edwards, theX-33 will flyatspeeds of up to Mach 15 and to altitudes approaching 80km. Potential land ing sites are in California, Mon tana, Utah and Washington state (Flight International, 13-19 November, 1996). • NEWS IN BRIEF • CHINESE ASTRONAUTS Chinese pilots Wu Tse and Li Tsinlung have begun training at the Russian Cosmonaut Training Centre and will return to China to prepare for a national manned space flight in 1999 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the cre ation of the People's Re public of China. • MONKEY BUSINESS Two monkeys, flies, insects, biological samples and plants, launched into orbit by a Soyuz U booster from Plesetsk on 24 December, 1996, aboard the Russian Bion 11 craft, were due to have been recovered after a 14-day mission on 7 January. • ENGINE PLANT Construction has begun of a new Space Shuttle Main Engine Processing building next to the Orbiter Proces sing building at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The engine-processing building is scheduled to be opened in July 1998. Russian programme in crisis TIM FURNISS/LONDON RUSSIA MAY HAVE to aban don its manned space pro gramme this year because of a severe shortage of funds, Yuri Koptev, director-general of the Russian Space Agency has warned the Government. It has been planned that the country's Mir 1 space station will be the base for several international missions in 1997, and that it will continue to be manned perma nently this year. These plans are now under threat, says Koptev. The cash crisis has also placed question marks against the launch es of the Corona, Resnrs, Okean and Foton spacecraft and the new Kupon and Yamal communica tions satellites. Funding for the national space programme has been cut by 80% since 1989. Koptev says that the country has "practically no reserve of booster rockets". Almost half the Russian com munications satellites in orbit are so outdated that they could stop operating "at any time", Koptev has warned Moscow. The crisis has delayed the production of the Service Module of the Inter national Space Station (ISS) by at least eight months, which will upset the planned assembly sched ule (Flight International, 18-31 December, 1996). Koptev's warnings are echoed by Yuri Poletayev, an executive of the Russian commercial space organi sation, Glavcosmos, who has told Government officials that 80% of the space industry's engineers and workers have left the space pro gramme and commercial con tracts, such as satellite launches, "...will not survive" without Government assistance. Seven launches ofWestern com munications satellites are sched uled for Proton commercial flights this year (Flight International, 11 - 17 December, 1996). Poletayev says that it will be essential to keep the Mir I space station operational for several more years, despite plans for the ISS to be manned first in 1998, to generate income from visits by international cosmonauts on com mercial missions. For example, a French commer cial mission is planned for as late as 1999. The Mir is "our national pride and a source of funds from the West", he says. Despite the problems, the US Space Shuttle Atlantis/STSS 1 is scheduled to be launched from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on 12 January to conduct the fifth Shuttle Mir Mission (SMM). The STS81 — the first of a planned eight Shuttle missions in 1997 — will dock at the Mir on 13 January to start five days of joint experiments. The Atlantis, which will carry a Spacehab double-mod ule, will deliver 650kg of equip ment and 590kg of water to the station. The five-man crew, under the command of Michael Baker, will work with Russian cosmonauts Valeri Korzun and Alexander Kaleri and NASA astronaut John Blaha, who arrived at the Mir in September, aboard the STS79. Blaha will return to Earth aboard the STS81 on 2 2 January, leaving astronautjerry Linenger aboard the Mir with Korzun and Kaleri. Linenger and a Russian cosmonaut will make a space- walk during his shift aboard the Mir, the fourth stay by a US astronaut. • Japan plans its first space-docking experiment JAPAN WILL BECOME the third space nation, after the USA and Russia, to conduct a ren dezvous and docking in space. The Engineering Test Satellite, ETS7, to be launched with the US/lapanese Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite by a national H2 booster in the middle of 1997, will consist of a target and a chaser satellite. These will be used to demon strate technologies for the auto matic rendezvous and docking operations planned for future spacecraft such as the Hope X unmanned, reusable, spaceplane during operations with the International Space Station. After reaching its 550km circu lar 3 5°-inclination orbit, the ETS7 chaser will deploy the target satel lite and manoeuvre to a distance of 10km. Usingaglobal-positioning- system receiver, rendezvous radar and a proximity sensor, the chaser craft is due auto matically to ren dezvous and dock with the target. The manoeu vre, which will be repeated five times during the 18- month mission, will not fully repli cate the first ren dezvous and dock ings of two craft which were launched separately by the \JSA.(Gemini 8) in 1996 and the former Soviet Union (Cosmos 186- 188) in 1967. Command will be via an Earth station using the Communications and Broadcasting Engineering ETS 7 with its target satellite Test Satellite, which is also sched uled for launch this year. The ETS7 will also be used to demonstrate the use of a 2m-long telerobotic arm to twice transfer a 20kg unit from one spacecraft to another when docked together. J FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 8 - 14 January 1997
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