| Title: | Space Exploration |
| Notice: | Shuttle launch schedules, see Note 6 |
| Moderator: | PRAGMA::GRIFFIN |
| Created: | Mon Feb 17 1986 |
| Last Modified: | Thu Jun 05 1997 |
| Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Number of topics: | 974 |
| Total number of notes: | 18843 |
A few odds & ends I picked up from various sources this week:
- Boeing have begun to reconfigure three IUS systems for the planetary
missions that were to have flown on STS/Centaur-G Prime. At least one
will be an IUS/PAM-D combination (not flown before). The delta-V of the
IUS is much, much less than the Centaur G-Prime so these spacecraft
have to fly much longer, more complex trajectories than originally
planned. (I wonder why they did not go with some Titan-IV/Centaur
variant?)
- Ariane V19 (the first flight with the new third stage injector and
ignition system) looks like being delayed until early Sept. This will
be an Ariane 3 carrying Aussat K3 and ECS-4. The first Ariane 4
is slotted for Jan 88.
- The Soviets are producing nice glossy brochures for the Proton
launcher (D class)
- The Soviets have released some information on the Ljappa science
module which will be sent up to Mir. It is said to be similar to
Cosmos 1443 that docked with Salyut 7 in 1983 (although it is unlikely
that Ljappa will carry propellant as C 1443 did). It includes a
return capsule. Diagrams show it docked to one of the side ports
of Mir.
- Thiokol fired a test SRB with the new joint design sucessfully.
From video it appeared to be a two segment, single joint motor.
- The Chinese have announced a new variant of the CZ-3 (CZ-3/4L,
I think) making about 20 variations on the CZ-2 and CZ-3 vehicles.
I'm not sure how many of these variations have actually flown.
- The Soviets are interested in selling Proton launch vehicles directly
to customers to be launch from an independant launch site near the
equator. Northern Queensland (Australia) is one possibility. This
may circumvent the export restrictions that currently make it
impossible to launch a US built comsat on a Proton.
gary
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