SPACEWARN Bulletin, SPX-574

  A publication of NASA NSSDC/WDC for Satellite Information, and the 
       World Warning Agency for Satellites, for COSPAR/ISES.

    (All information in this publication was received between
                1 August 2001 and 31 August 2001.)

A.  List of New International Designations and Launch Dates (UT).
    (USSPACECOM Catalog numbers are in parentheses.)
        
        COSPAR/WWAS USSPACECOM  SPACECRAFT           
            INT.ID    CAT. #      NAME           LAUNCH DATE, UT (2001)
           -------------------------------------------------------
            2001-039A (26900) INTELSAT 902         30 August
            2001-038A (26898) LRE                  29 August
            2001-037A (26892) COSMOS 2379          24 August
            2001-036A (26890) PROGRESS M-45        21 August
            2001-035A (26888) STS 105              10 August
            2001-034A (26884) GENESIS              08 August
            2001-033A (26880) USA 159              06 August 

B.  Text of Launch Information

2001-039A  INTELSAT 902 is a geosynchronous communications spacecraft that
           was launched by an Ariane 4 rocket from Kourou at 06:46 UT on 30 
           August 2001. It will provide telecommunications and television 
           broadcast to Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, the Far East
           and Australia through its 44 C- and 12 Ku-band transponders. 
           Parking longitude is unknown.

2001-038A  LRE (Laser Reflecting Equipment) is a Japanese test spacecraft that
           was launched from the Tsukuba Space Center on Tanegashima island
           by a H-2A rocket at 07:29 UT on 29 August 2001. The main goal was to
           launch the H-2A successfully after its earlier version, H-2, had 
           failed a few times. The H-2A is a modified version with (unlike 
           the H-2) many components procured in the international markets. The
           87 kg LRE is a passive mirror ball of diameter 51 cm and carries 24
           glass sheets and 126 prisms on its surface, and was ejected from 
           the H-2A just to ascertain the rocket's potential capability for 
           precisely launching four-tonne payloads with the help of light 
           echoes from the LRE. Though the eventual goal of H-2A is to launch
           geosynchronous spacecraft with capabilities comparable to some of
           the rockets in other countries, but at a lower cost, the LRE will 
           remain merely in a "transfer orbit". The initial orbital parameters
           were, approximately, period 642 min, apogee 36,200 km, perigee 250 
           km, and inclination 28.5 deg.
 
2001-037A  COSMOS 2379 is a Russian geosynchronous military reconnaissance
           spacecraft that was launched by a Proton-K rocket with a DM-2 final
           stage from Baikonur at 20:39 UT on 24 August 2001. It is to provide
           early warning of missiles launched from the United States with the 
           help of a heat-sensing array of detectors. [According to the Moscow 
           Kommersant newspaper, these early warning geosynchronous satellites
           belong to the US-KMO group, also known as  Prognoz fleet, while the
           highly elliptical complement belongs to the US-KS group, also known
           as Oko fleet, both supplemented by about eight ground-based radars.]
           Parking longitude is unknown.

2001-036A  PROGRESS M-45 is a Russian automatic cargo ship that was launched 
           by a Soyuz-U rocket from Baikonur at 09:32 UT on 21 August 2001.
           It docked automatically with the ISS on 23 August and delivered 2.5 
           tonnes of fuel, water, oxygen, equipment and spare parts. Initial 
           orbital parameters were period 88.6 min, apogee 245 km, perigee 193
           km, and inclination 51.7 deg.

2001-035A  STS 105 is an American shuttle spacecraft that was launched from
           Cape Canaveral at 21:10 UT on 10 August 2001 to dock with the ISS.
           It carried a crew of 10, including three to-be-stationed long 
           endurance astronauts (one American and two Russian), five tonnes of 
           supplies, hardware, and a bedroom suite to accommodate a third 
           astronaut in the Destiny module. The crew installed in the station 
           two new science experiment racks that were carried in the Leonardo 
           container which was first lifted out of the shuttle and bolted to 
           the UNITY module. Leonardo then carried back all the trash from the
           ISS back to the shuttle. They installed also the MISSE (Materials 
           International Space Station Experiment) container outside the ISS 
           to test the effect of radiation on materials, and some low cost 
           science experiments such as microgravity cell growth studies inside
           the station. The shuttle landed back in Cape Canaveral at 18:23 UT
           on 22 August '01, ferrying back three astronauts (one Russian and
           two American) who had spent over five months in the station. The 
           initial orbital parameters of the shuttle were period 92.3 min, 
           apogee 402 km, perigee 373 km, and inclination 51.6 deg. 

2001-034A  GENESIS is an American solar research spacecraft that was launched 
           by a Delta 2 rocket from Cape Canaveral at 16:13 UT on 8 August 
           2001. The mission is among NASA's Discovery Program and Genesis 
           seeks to discover the origin/genesis of solar system. The spacecraft
           was directly injected into the Langrangian-1 (L-1) region (located 
           at about 1.5 million km in the sunward direction) where it will 
           arrive in November 2001 and collect solar wind samples from
           October 2001 to April 2004. The 633 kg, 2.3 m diameter, and 7.9 m 
           length spacecraft carries four instruments in a returnable capsule
           of 1.5 m diameter and 1.3 m length: a wide angle ion collector, a 
           concentrated-ion collector, an ion spectrometer and an electron 
           spectrometer. The wide angle collector is a circular mosaic of 
           one meter diameter consisting of many hexagonal tiles made of 
           diamond, gold, ultra-pure silicon, sapphire, aluminum or germanium.
           All kinds of ions will be implanted in the wide angle collector 
           whereas the carbon, nitrogen and oxygen ions (presumably, ions 
           lighter than these also) will be focussed on to the concentrated-ion
           collector made up of hexagonal shaped diamond or silicon carbide 
           tiles; this focussed enhancement of these ions is necessary since 
           the collecting wafers may contain nontrivial amounts of earthly 
           contamination of these elements. This focussing is enabled by a 
           parabolic mirror, with the positive voltages confined to numerous 
           tiny segments on its surface. The paraboloid will focus very 
           little of the solar light/heat. A total of 10-20 micrograms of ions
           will be collected by both collectors during the 30 months of 
           exposure. The ion spectrometer will monitor all species with energy
           greater than about 1 keV, and the electron spectrometer the smaller
           energy range electrons. (The solar wind speed is about 400 km/s and
           the protons in it are at about 1.0 keV with the heavier ions and the
           electrons having energies proportional to their masses.) The 
           spectrometer data will be telemetered in the S-band, and the re-
           entering sample canister will parachute over Utah state in early 
           September 2004, where it will be grabbed by a helicopter. More 
           information is available in http://genesismission.jpl.nasa.gov/, 
           though the links are mainly education/outreach/public-relations 
           interest pages. The Project Scientist and Principal Investigator 
           for GENESIS is Donald Burnett, California Institute of Technology, 
           and the Lead Investigator for the concentrated-ion collector and 
           the two spectrometers is Roger Wiens of the Los Alamos National 
           Laboratory. The returned samples will be stored at Johnson Space
           Center for analysis and distribution. The Project Manager for the 
           mission is Chester Sasaki of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
 
2001-033A  USA 159 is an American geosynchronous military reconnaissance 
           satellite in the DSP (Defense Support Program) fleet that was 
           launched by a Titan 4B rocket from Cape Canaveral at 07:28 UT on 6 
           August 2001. The 2,386 kg, 1.485 kW, 10 m long and 6.7 m diameter
           spacecraft carries an array of 6,000 heat-sensing detectors to 
           monitor and locate missile launches. It will also enable monitoring
           of surface nuclear explosions and forest fires. The USA 159 is the 
           21st member of the DSP fleet, with many of its members still 
           operational. Its alternative name may probably be DSP 21.

C. Spacecraft Particularly Suited for International Participation

   1. Spacecraft with essentially continuous radio beacons on frequencies
less than 150 MHz, or higher frequencies if especially suited for
ionospheric or geodetic studies.  (NNSS denotes U.S. Navy Navigational
Satellite System. Updates or corrections to the list are possible only with
information from the user community.)

      THE FULL LIST APPEARED IN SPX 545. (See http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/
      spacewarn/)
      THE LIST WILL NOT BE REPEATED IN  FUTURE ISSUES, UNTIL SIGNIFICANTLY
      REVISED AGAIN.
      
    2. Global Positioning System satellites useful for navigational purposes
and geodetic studies. High precision [< 20 cm] GPS constellation tracking data
obtained from the network of about 80 dedicated global stations that are of 
interest to geodetic study may be obtained through the following services 
provided by the International Association of Geodesy [IGS]).

                FTP:    igscb.jpl.nasa.gov  [directory /igscb]
                WWW:    http://igscb.jpl.nasa.gov/
                E-Mail: igscb@cobra.jpl.nasa.gov

The standard format of the GPS situation appeared in SPX-518. It will not be
repeated since an excellent source of trajectory- and science-related GPS
information is at URL
http://www.colorado.edu/geography/gcraft/notes/gps/gps_f.html.
It provides many links to GPS-related data bases.

    3. Russian Global Navigational (Positioning) Spacecraft, GLONASS
constellation. SPACEWARN requests updates or additions from readers to the
list. 

All GLONASS spacecraft are in the general COSMOS series. The COSMOS numbers
invoked by USSPACECOM have sometimes differed from the numbers (NNNN)
associated in Russia. The operating frequencies in MHz are computed from the
channel number K. Frequencies (MHz) are L1 = 1602.0 + 0.5625K and L2 = 1246.0 +
0.4375K. The standard format of the GLONASS situation appeared in SPX-545.
It will not be repeated in view of the excellent updated source, with the URL
http://www.rssi.ru/SFCSIC/, or http://www.rssi.ru/SFCSIC/english.html,
maintained by the Coordinational Scientific Information Center (CSIC), Russian
Space Forces.

    4. Visually bright objects. A comprehensive list of visually bright
objects with their 2-line orbital elements is available from USSPACECOM, via a
NASA URL, http://oig1.gsfc.nasa.gov/files/visible.tle. The list, however,
does not include visual magnitudes, but are expected to be brighter than
magnitude 5.

    5. Actual decays or landings of payload spacecraft and rocket bodies (R/B)
only. No further information is available.

Designations         Common Name                  Decay Date, 2001
------------         -----------                     ----------
1995-037J (23630)  R/B (Aux) Proton-K                    01 Sep
2000-039C (26406)  BIRD-RUBIN                            30 Aug
2001-037B (26893)  R/B Proton-K                          27 Aug
2001-001C (26687)  SZ-2 Module                           24 Aug
2001-036B (26891)  R/B Soyuz-U                           23 Aug
1985-071D (15955)  R/B that launched COSMOS 1675         23 Aug
2001-035A (26888)  STS 105            Landed on          22 Aug
2001-021A (26773)  PROGRESS M-16                         22 Aug
2000-039A (26404)  MITA-O (NINA)                         15 Aug
2001-030B (26868)  R/B Molniya-M                         12 Aug
1979-011A (11266)  COSMOS 1076                           10 Aug
1995-009G (23517)  R/B (Aux) that launched 3 GLONASS s/c 06 Aug
1994-038E (23172)  R/B (Aux) Proton                      05 Aug
                   
    6. Miscellaneous Items. (This section contains information or data that are
entered on occasion and may not be repeated in each issue of the SPACEWARN
Bulletin.) 

    7. Related NSSDC resources.

NSSDC/WDC for Satellite Information is an archival center for science data
from many spacecraft. Many datasets are on-line for electronic access, through
the URL,
               http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/space
For off-line data, please contact the Request Office, NSSDC, Code 633, NASA
GSFC, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, U.S.A., for specific information (REQUEST@
NSSDCA.GSFC.NASA.GOV). Information on the current status of the instruments
on board from the investigators will be most welcomed. Precomputed trajectory
files and orbital elements of many magnetospheric and heliospheric science-
payload spacecraft may be obtained from:
            ftp://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/orbits

Other files interest for Earth-centered s/c can be generated thru the URL,
                  http://sscweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Codes related to the heliospheric spacecraft trajectories can be executed
through the URL,
                 http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/space/helios/heli.html
Descriptions of many spacecraft, experiments and datasets are available
through links from
                  http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/sc-query.html

===========================================================================

                         SPACEWARN Bulletin

The bulletin is intended to serve as an international communication medium
for the rapid distribution of information on satellites and space probes.  The
material it contains is based on guidelines in the COSPAR Guide to Rocket and
Satellite Information and Data Exchange, COSPAR Transactions #8, December 1972,
and various Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) resolutions.

All bulletins beginning with January 1991 (SPX-447) are now available on line;
the SPX number increases by one for each succeeding month (for example, the
January 1993 bulletin is SPX-471).

The bulletin may be accessed through the World Wide Web (WWW). The URL is
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/spacewarn/

Users are encouraged to submit their comments and suggestions for the
improvement of this bulletin to SPACEWARN Bulletin: WWAS@NDADSB.GSFC.NASA.GOV.

Categories of Spacecraft

To improve the effectiveness of international distribution of satellite and
space probe information via the SPACEWARN system, spacecraft are identified in
categories according to the urgency and detail of information needed by the
scientific community as follows:

CATEGORY 1:  Spacecraft that carry essentially continuous telemetry or radio
beacons, usually on frequencies less than 150 MHz.

CATEGORY 2: GPS constellation of positioning/navigational spacecraft.

CATEGORY 3: GLONASS constellation of positioning/navigational spacecraft.

CATEGORY 4: Occasionally, a list of bright, orbiting objects of visual
magnitude 4 or brighter.

The bulletin also carries launch dates, international IDs, and USSPACECOM
catalog numbers, followed by a brief outline of the payload and orbital
parameters, re-entry of major objects, and miscellaneous sections.
These data are based on launch announcements or on information received from
individuals, launching authorities, FBIS and USSPACECOM emails, news
papers, and some Web sites.