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Aviation History
1997
1997 - 1994.PDF
SPACEFLIGHT Launch activity includes first GPS 2R launch the PanAmSat :> communi cations satellite from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on 5 August, while the PanAmSat 6 is due for an Ariane 44P launch on flight V98 from the Guiana Space Centre, Kourou, French Guina, on 8 August. Meanwhile, Arianespace has won three more contracts to launch Mexico's Hughes-built Morelos 3 communications satel lite in 1998 and two CD Radio spacecraft being built by Space Systems Loral. The CD craft will be lifted by an Ariane 5 booster in 1999 under a service to CD Radio of Washing ton DC, partially financed through a loan from Arianespace Finance. This will be the first use of the supplementary services which were recently established by the European launcher organisation. It is also the first contract to be signed by Jean Marie Luton, Arianespace s new chairman and chief executive. At Vandenberg AFB, California, a Titan 4 booster is being prepared for launch of a US reconnaissance satellite into polar orbit. The launch was called off on 16 July, when nitrogen tetroxide leaked from the boosters thrust- vector control system, resulting in a partial evacuation of the base. Meanwhjile, Russia was to launch the manned Soyuz TM26 spacecraft from Baikonur on 5 August to dock with the Mir space station FlightInternational, 30JuIy- 5 August), while at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Space Shuttle STSSS/Discovay is being prepared for its 8 August flight on a ten-day Earth-observation science mission. The STS85 will be the first Shuttle to have new on-board flight software which will allow future missions to carry more pay- load into orbit, especially to sup port the construction and operation of the International Space Station. On the STS85, the Lockheed Martin 01-26 software improve ments will maintain a constant pitch rate for the Discovery at solid- rocket-booster (SRB) separation. The most radical change to the Shuttle ascent as a result of the new- software will be the roll of the Shuttle stack to a "heads-up" posi tion after SRB separation. Pre viously, the orbiter has remained "heads down" from just after lift off to main engine cut-off. On the STS86 - a flight to the Mir scheduled for September-the roll manoeuvre will begin at an alti tude of 350,000ft (107,000m), to permit earlier communications with the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite system. • Japanese abandon HOPE spaceplane project TIM FURNISS/LONDON AMcDONNELL Douglas Delta 2 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral on 23 July carried the first Navstar GPS 2R global- positioning-system-satellite to reach orbit. It is the 42nd in the Navstar series to be launched. The original 2 R spacecraft, built by Lockheed Martin, was destroyed in the explosion of a Delta rocket over Cape Canaveral, in Florida, in January. The 2 R craft and its 18 successor satellites will be able to perform six months' autonomous operations without ground-control corrections. In another launch from Canaveral, on 28 July, an ILS International Launch Services Atlas 2AS booster lofted Japan's Superbird C communications satellite into orbit. An ILS Proton booster will Rotary Rocket wins $6 million backing ROTARY ROCKET has secured $6 million of initial financing from private investors to begin design of its Roton re-usable single-stage-to-orbit launch vehi cle. Burt Rutan's Scaled Com posites will build the Roton, which will take off like a conventional booster, but land like an unpow- ered helicopter. The first flight is scheduled for 1999. The unmanned vehicle is intended to carry a 3,200kg pay- load into low-Earth orbit at a launch cost of $2,200/kg, com pared with current prices of around $22,00O/kg, says the Redwood Shores, California-based firm. Turnaround between flights will be one or two days, it claims. The Roton will have an aero- spike engine, with an internal "rotor" for centrifugal pumping of the kerosene and liquid-oxygen propellants to pressurise the 192 small combustion chambers, elim inating the need for turbopumps, the company says. Three rotor blades will be deployed during re entry and the vehicle will autoro- tate to a vertical landing. • JAPAN HAS cancelled the HOPE unmanned spaceplane project as a result of budget cuts. The HOPE was to have been launched on an H2 A rocket to pro vide logistics support for the Japanese element of the International Space Station. There were hopes of following it up even tually with a manned version. The country's Science and Technology Agency has concluded that the HOPE should be replaced by a re-usable, unmanned single- stage-to-orbit spaceplane. Each launch would cost an estimated $8 million, one-tenth of the cost of a IIOPE launch. There are no plans to build a manned shuttle vehicle, says the Agency. Nonetheless, the small Hope X prototype vehicle under development may still fly in 2001 a technology-demonstration mission aboard the new, uprated H2A booster, as planned. The calls for budget restraint will affect a series of National Space Development Agency and Institute of Space and Astronautics Sciences missions. The launch of Japan's Comets communications-technology sa tellite aboard the fifth H2 booster on 18 August has been delayed to ensure that the spacecraft does not experience the same kind of solar- panel problem thought to have caused the in-orbit failure of the Adeos satellite on 30June. • Martian panorama NASA HAS RELEASED this 3 60° panorama of the Ares Vallis region of Mars, taken by the US Mars Pathfinder lander which bounced down on to the Red Planet on 4 July (Flight International, 16-22 July). The Sojourner rover, also pictured among the rocky terrain, has been used successfully ana lysed the chemical composition of several rocks in the area, which is thought to be an ancient flood plain. The hills on the horizon, nicknamed "Twin Peaks", are less than 800m (2,600ft) away. Mission managers say than the Sojourner could be operated "indefinitely", and that the mission has been extended to a long-term project. 24 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 6 - 12 August 1997
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