FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1997
1997 - 0444.PDF
SPACEFLIGHT Loral wins contract to build Chinasat 8 SPACE SYSTEMS/LORAL has been selected to finalise a contract with China Telecom munications Broadcast Satellite to build the Chinasat 8. The satellite, to be launched late in 1998, will be based on a standard FS-1300, three-axis stabilised spacecraft bus — the 38th of this series to be built — and will be equipped with 16 Ku-band and 36 C-band transponders, to provide video, data and voice telecommu nications services in China. The spacecraft will have total electrical power of 1 lkW. It is the eighteenth Loral spacecraft in pro duction at its Palo Alto factory in California. Also awaiting launch is the Chinasat 7, a Hughes HS-376 spin-stabilised spacecraft. J NEWS IN BRIEF • THIRD ORION Hughes Space and Com munications has been award ed a contract from Orion Asia Pacific to build the ten C-band, 33 Ku-band trans ponder Orion 3 communica tions satellite, an HS-601HP model, which will be launched aboard a McDon nell Douglas Delta 3 booster into a 139° position in geosta tionary orbit in 1998 (Flight International, 1-7 January). • ARIANE POISED The first Ariane 4 launch of 1997 is scheduled for 30 January, with the flight of Argentina's Nahuel 1A and the USA's GE 1 communica tions satellites into geosta tionary transfer orbit aboard a44LPmodel/V93. • EARTH IMAGER NASA plans to launch the LightSAR radar-imaging Earth-observation satellite to use advanced technologies to reduce the cost and en hance the quality of radar- based information for scien tific research, remote-sen sing and emergency-man agement applications. Solar storm is suspected in Telstar 401 satellite loss TIM FURNISS/LONDON NASA SCIENTISTS AT the Goddard Space Flight Cen ter, Maryland, believe that a Solar storm on 6 January created enough geomagnetic activity to knock out the AT&T's Telstar 401 communi cations satellite in geostationary orbit (GEO) on 11 January. The satellite is a total loss (Flight Inter national, 22-28January). The Telstar 401 suffered a cata strophic failure during routine sta tion-keeping manoeuvres using the crafts hydrazine arcjet thrus- ters. The satellite had been in ser vice since 1993 and was scheduled to have remained operative until 2006. The Telstar 402 was lost in 1994 just after separation, when the firing of a pyrovalve to open a pro- pellant line ignited some hydrazine fuel, destroying the satellite. Another satellite, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admini stration's GOES 8 meteorological satellite in GEO, suffered a mal function on 8 January which affect ed its attitude-control system and the spacecraft went into automatic shutdown mode. Control of the satellite was restored after 37h. Malfunctions, mainly to atti tude-control systems on several satellites, caused by electrostatic discharges resulting from Solar activity are more common than satellite manufacturers care to admit (Flight International, 2-8 October, 1996). On20January, 1994, three satel lites, the Aniks El and 2 and the Intelsat K, suffered electrostatic discharges which caused malfunc tions in their gyro-guidance sys tems, seven days after a geo magnetic storm left the Sun. J Iridium launches will be further delayed after Delta explosion THE xYIUCII-DELAYED maiden flight of the first of Motorola's Iridium mobile com munications-satellites aboard a McDonnell Douglas (MDC) Delta 2 booster faces a further hold-up pending the investigation into the loss of a Delta 2,13s after launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on 17 January. MDC had planned seven Iridium launches of 33 satellites this year, plus six for other cus tomers, including the first launch of the Globalstar system, which will compete with the Iridium. The original launch datefor the Iridium of late December 1996 was delayed because of technical and weather problems. ANavstar Block 2Aglobal-posi- tioning-system (GPS) satellite was lost in the explosion of the booster just after launch, apparently after a fault developed which triggered the automatic abort system. It was the first Delta failure since May 1986 and the first total failure of the Delta 2 model. There will be no disruption to GPS services as the lost craft was a replacement for an older satellite, which is still in orbit and one of 26 spacecraft which are in an opera tional constellation. • Delta 2: earlier launches successful Russia worries about Space Station role YURI KOPTEV, director-general of the Russian Space Agency, has admitted that his country could be ousted from the International Space Station (ISS). The Russian energy module, the first element of the ISS, has been completed and will be launched on 27 November, but other hardware is behind schedule because of lack of funds. Koptev says that 1,500 billion roubles ($267 million) is required in 1997 to enable Russia to contin ue work on the Alpha. NASA has already hinted that Russia could be relegated to a subcontractror level. Russia's service module, already eight months behind schedule, is being replaced by a US module. • NASA astronaut John Blaha has suffered severe return-to-Earth gravity problems after his 128 days on board the Russian Mir I space station, compared to the experi ence of Norman Thagard and Shannon Lucid, the previous US occupants of the station. Blaha, who landed aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis/STSSl on 22 January, says that he felt he weighed "a thousand pounds" and was "absolutely stunned" at his condition. He could not raise his leg more than a few millimetres and was lifted out of the Shuttle. • 26 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 29 January - 4 February 1997
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
