SB NEWS @ AMSAT $SPC0612 * SpaceNews 12-Jun-95 * BID: $SPC0612 ========= SpaceNews ========= MONDAY JUNE 12, 1995 SpaceNews originates at KD2BD in Wall Township, New Jersey, USA. It is published every week and is made available for unlimited free distribution. * MAYDAY TRAFFIC PASSED ON AO-16 * ================================== Troy, ZL1UOP, recently passed a MAYDAY message received from Salomon Atoll, Chagos Archipelago, in the Indian Ocean. The message, dated 31-May-95 at 17:37 UTC, read as follows: Vessel G, a small fishing vessel called mayday. Drifting close to south Salomon Atoll. Vessel G has three person on board and has lost its Mother Ship TALBOE 3. The Talbo 3 is Mauritius registered. Communication with Vessel G, Have ceased and a Hand Held Flare has been seen. Contact With Deago Garcia is required. Please contact a Rescue center and pass this information on. Deago Garcia can contact us on 2182 KHz. Mark Shepherd, ZL1TRE of Auckland, New Zealand, picked up the message and quickly pass it on to Search & Rescue in Wellington. Graeme, VK2ZIS, of Port Macquarie, Australia also picked up the message and passed it along to the Australian Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre. Terry, ZL2AHK, in New Zealand passed message to the Honolulu Rescue Center. On 01-Jun-95 at 06:05 UTC, Troy, ZL1UOP posted the following message as a follow-up to his original MAYDAY traffic relay: To : ALL From: ZL1UOP Time: 060551UTC Date: 01 Jun 1995 ----------------- Hello, If you have replied to the Mayday, Many thanks for helping. We have managed to contact Deago Garcia (14 hours late). The Fishermen were rescued by the Mother ship early this morning. Today 4 boats came from the mother ship and thanked us for our Help etc.... Sorry if I have caused any inconvenience, but Communication with Deago Garcia (a major US Naval base 100 nmls away) is difficult from here. Bye Bye.... Troy ZL1UOP@AO16,LO19 6s 73e [Info via VK2ZIS and the AMSAT-OSCAR-16 Satellite] * NEW STS LAUNCH DATES SET * ============================ NASA mangers have set new target launch dates for two Shuttle missions scheduled to fly this summer. Space Shuttle Discovery on Mission STS-70 is now targeted for launch on July 13 and Space Shuttle Endeavour is set to be launched on Mission STS-69 on July 30. The new flight dates for Discovery and Endeavour have no impact to the processing work on Space Shuttle Atlantis being prepared for the STS-71 launch on the first Shuttle-Mir docking mission. The Atlantis launch remains planned for no earlier than June 22 and a firm launch date may be announced early next week. The new target launch dates for Discovery and Endeavour were established after the launch team finished assessing the impact of last week's decision to roll Discovery off Launch Pad 39-B. The rollback was required in order to make repairs to the foam insulation on the external tank. [Info via NASA] * STS-71 MISSION PROFILE * ========================== The following describes the nominal mission orbit profile for STS-71. This is an historic mission in that it represents the first docking of the U.S. Space Shuttle with the Russian Mir Space Station. During this mission there will be a crew change and the crew returning to Earth on the Shuttle will be different from the original crew. The scheduled launch time is 24-Jun-95 / 20:42:50 UTC. The mission will have a 51.6 degree orbital inclination. The orbits for STS-71 are provided in time-independent Earth-Fixed Greenwich (EFG -- a.k.a TDR) position and velocity state vectors. The mean Keplerian Two-Line Elements (TLEs) may be computed from these vectors using the VEC2TLE or V2KEP software (versions 9435 required). Since the vectors are time-independent, the only variable is the launch date and time for STS-71 (see scheduled time above). The launch date/time must be entered into VEC2TLE as a reference time for the vectors, which have time referenced in Mission Elapsed Time (MET). Launch time may be changed/updated as necessary using VEC2TLE. The VEC2TLE and V2KEP software is available from AMSAT-NA. VEC2TLE is available from several places including a few Internet ftp sites, private BBSs, and on CompuServe. Below are the reference times and events associated with the STS-71 state vectors. All events in this mission profile represent significant orbit changes caused by a thruster firing. Therefore, each vector should be used only up to the time of the next vector. Vector # Time (MET) Rev Event Apogee (km) Perigee (km) 1 000/00:43:03.854 1 OMS-2 297 203 2 000/03:38:50.000 3 NC-1 410 294 3 000/15:01:32.847 10 NC-2 397 310 4 001/03:27:43.673 18 NC-3 411 299 5 001/12:25:05.751 24 NC-4 406 387 6 001/13:57:27.533 25 Terminal Init 412 392 7 001/15:19:33.533 26 Mir Docking 405 391 8 006/07:07:00.000 106 Final Sep. 404 390 Questions and Comments regarding this mission profile should be sent to: Ken Ernandes CompuServe: 70511,3107 Internet: n2wwd@amsat.org Packet Radio: n2wwd@kc2fd.#nli.ny.usa.na * ON-LINE MAGAZINE AVAILABLE * ============================== A new Amateur Radio Operator-On-Line Magazine is up and running and available on the World Wide Web at the following URL: http://www.amateurradio.com This is a little different from other Web pages. It is a complete magazine on-line with links between articles and pages. Since this is the first magazine of this type for Amateur Radio, the creators are interested in receiving feedback from readers. The creators of the Web pages are also looking for future articles to include in the on-line magazine. Comments should be directed to: evegraph@aol.com. [Info via Pam Salata, N9UPN] * THANKS! * =========== Thanks to all who sent messages of appreciation to SpaceNews, especially: G3XGY G4ZCT KB6ZVP ZR6RSW ZS6AZG KW7E PS7KM * FEEDBACK/INPUT WELCOMED * =========================== Mail to SpaceNews should be directed to the editor (John, KD2BD) via any of the following paths: FAX : 1-908-747-7107 PACKET : KD2BD @ KS4HR.NJ.USA.NA INTERNET : kd2bd@amsat.org -or- magliaco@pilot.njin.net SATELLITE : AMSAT-OSCAR-16, LUSAT-OSCAR-19 MAIL : John A. Magliacane, KD2BD Department of Engineering and Technology Advanced Technology Center Brookdale Community College Lincroft, New Jersey 07738 U.S.A. <<=- SpaceNews: The first amateur newsletter read in space! -=>> /EX