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Aviation History
2001
2001 - 0119.PDF
BPACEFUaHT Russians restore control of Mir TIM FURNISS/LONDON THE MIR SPACE station is under "full control" after a 2 lh loss of contact on 26 December caused by a battery problem, according to the Russian Space Agency. Anatoli Kiselev, director of the Khrunichev space company which built Mir, has also cited "loss of vig ilance" as an issue. Kiselev says diat communications engineers were concentrating on the International Space Station (ISS) and allowed the power consumption on Mir to exceed its supply. The problem has focused atten tion on the need to de-orbit Mir safely. Khrunichev chief, Yuri Koptev says: "We have no right to run the risk" any longer. The planned controlled de- orbit of Mir will take place in February/March, when two Progress tankers will make die final burns which will induce a con trolled re-entry. The first Progress will be launched on 16 January. A Soyuz TM crew of two cosmonauts, Gannadi Padalka and Nikolai Budarin, will only be launched if there is an emergency, requiring them to repair systems on the sta tion. Even without die planned de- orbit manoeuvre, diere is no danger of a re-entry until March, says Koptev. As Mir is prepared for its demise, NASA claims that the ISS is going to be the "first permanently occupied space station". The UK's Molniya Space Consultancy, how ever, points out that crews were aboard Mir continuously "two weeks short of 10 years between September 1989 and August 1999". • The Progress Ml-4 unmanned tanker craft has been re-docked to the ISS by crewman Yuri Gidzenko, using the ISS Toru system. The Progress was undocked on 1 December. • Titan IV operations to be extended The US Air Force is delaying the retirement of the Lockheed Martin Titan IV fleet beyond the phase-out in 2002 with the last ordered booster not flying until 2004. There are only two Titan IV launch sites at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Vandenberg AFB, California, and the turnaround between launches is usually six months. A second Titan TV pad at Canaveral has been refurbished to accommodate Lockheed's Atlas V Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle. The first Titan IV was launched in 1989 and three models of each of rVA and rVB versions have made 25 successful flights and five failed launches. Computer shuts down Tsyklon DURING THE last satellite launch of 2000, six Russian Strela 3 -class data communications messaging satellites, still attached to their upper stage, were lost during re-entry into the Earth atmosphere. The loss followed the failure of die third stage of a Ukrainian-built Tsyklon 3 booster launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome on 27 December. Debris fell in an area 58km (93 miles) south-east of Ostrov Vrangelya island, in the Bering Straits, East Siberia. Tsyklon boosters have been grounded until an inquiry has been completed. Tsyklon manufacturer KB Yuzhnoye says that the third stage of die Tsyklon 3 veered off course and its engine was shut down by the flight computer at T+3 67. The first stage firing was to have placed the stage into a parking orbit, with a second firing placing die satellites into a 1,420km circu lar, 82° inclination orbit. Three of the Strela 3 craft were military Gonets-Dl versions and three were to be used for civilian purposes. Six more satellites have been ordered from Reshetnikov NPO, in Siberia. The last Tsyklon launch of Strela 3 satellites in June 1998 failed to place the spacecraft into the right orbit and they eventually drifted out of the dual-place orbital con stellation, says the UK's Molniya Space Consultancy which moni tors Russian space activities. The Tsyklon 3 has made 111 successful flights since 1977, widi two failing to reach correct orbit and five failures. The two-stage Tsyklon M has flown 102 times Q NASA invites competitive bids for Pluto/Kuiper mission in 2004 THREE MONTHS after it cancelled its mission to Pluto because of dramatic cost increases, NASA has turned to an open com petition in a bid to develop an affordable alternative. This month the agency will invite competitive bids for a mis sion to the Pluto-Charon system and the Kuiper Belt beyond, which it says wil^ cost not more than $500 million including launch. Work on the NASAJet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) Pluto/Kuiper Express mission was stopped last September after cost projections ballooned from $650 million to $1.5 billion. NASA is not committed to selecting or executing a Pluto mis sion, says associate administrator for space science Ed Weiler. "But we want to make sure we have all the options on die table." Proposals are due by 19 March. Two or more proposals will be selected for more detailed studies leading to selection of the winning mission in August diis year. The new Pluto/Kuiper Express mission will be modelled on the NASA Discovery programme, which has resulted in lower cost, more focused scientific missions using rapidly developed spacecraft. "Competition has worked quite well in other NASA space science programmes," says Weiler. NASA had planned to launch JPL's Pluto/Kuiper Express in 2004 to take advantage of ajupiter grav ity-assisted trajectory available only every 12 or so years. No launch date has been specified for die new mission, but NASA's goal is to reach Pluto by 2015, suggest ing a 2004-6 launch. Before the stop-work order, "unacceptable" cost increases on JPL's Pluto probe were endanger ing a higher-priority mission to Jupiter's moon Europa, pushing its launch back from 2003 to 2011. Under the new plan, the Europa orbiter, also being developed by JPL, will be launched in 2 008. • FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 9 - 15 January 2001 25
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