SPACEWARN Activities

2010-036A

Beidou IGSO 1, a Chinese navigation satellite, was launched by a Long March 3A rocket from Xichang at 21:30 UT on 31 July 2010. The craft has an orbital inclination of 55° and will eventually operate from a circular orbit of about 35800 km altitude to cover the Asia-Pacific region. Beidou IGSO 1 will join four other Beidou 2 satellites already in space and is intended to form part of an eventual system, also known as Compass, composed of 35 satellites in geostationary and medium-altitude orbits. The Compass system is expected to be operational for Asian-Pacific users by 2012 and to global users by 2020. The positional accuracy for civilian users is expected to be about 10 m.

2010-035E

TISat 1, a Swiss satellite, was launched on 12 July 2010 from Sriharikota at 03:52 UT by a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. TISat 1 is a student-developed, low-cost CubeSat mission of SUPSI (Scuola Universitaria Professionale della Svizzera Italiana, i.e., University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland). The objectives of the mission include monitoring of the durability of exposed thin bonding wires, PCB tracks and lines (atomic Oxygen effects), verification of the system fault tolerance scheme, acquisition of spacecraft environment and operating data.

2010-035D

Alsat 2A, a remote-sensing Algerian satellite, was launched on 12 July 2010 from Sriharikota at 03:52 UT by a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. Alsat 2A is part of a two-satellite system that will enable Algeria to obtain very high-quality images for use in a wide variety of applications, including cartography, management of agriculture, forestry, water, mineral and oil resources, crop protection, management of natural disasters and land planning. Alsat 2B, the second part of the satellite system, will launch at a later date.

2010-035C

AISSat 1, a Norwegian satellite, was launched on 12 July 2010 from Sriharikota at 03:52 UT by a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. AISSat 1 is equipped with an instrument that receives and forwards Automatic Identification System (AIS) signals, a radio communications network with transmitters on most large vessels. Using AIS the satellite will demonstrate maritime ship-tracking technologies.

2010-035B

STUDSAT (STUDent SATellite), an Indian satellite, was launched on 12 July 2010 from Sriharikota at 03:52 UT by a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. The main objective of the satellite is to perform remote sensing and capture images of the surface of the Earth using its camera of resolution 90 m, which will be used for vegetation and terrain mapping. STUDSAT was designed and developed by a consortium of seven Engineering Colleges from Bangalore (4) and Hyderabad (3). The mission life is slated to be six months.

2010-035A

Cartosat 2B, an Indian Earth observation satellite, was launched on 12 July 2010 at 03:52 UT from Sriharikota. The 694 kg satellite was launched by a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. The satellite carries a panchromatic, high spatial resolution, stereoscopic vision camera. The satellite's black and white camera has a resolution of 0.8 m and will observe Earth land and ocean surfaces from orbit. The imagery will have applications in resource mapping, urban planning, transportation studies, water monitoring, and crop inventories.

2010-034A

EchoStar 15, a US communications satellite, was launched on a Proton-M rocket with a Breeze M upper stage from Baikonur on 10 July 2010 at 18:40 UT. The craft weighed 5521 kg. The satellite will broadcast direct-to-home programming service to the eastern half of the United States. In the coming weeks, ground controllers will command the satellite's own engine to circularize the orbit at about 35800 km altitude above the equator where the craft will match the Earth's rotation and appear parked at 61.5° W longitude. EchoStar 15 carries 32 Ku-band transponders and has a design life of 15 years. It will replace EchoStar 3.

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 400 dedicated global stations that are of interest to geodetic study may be obtained through the following services provided by the International GNSS Service (IGS). The IGS is a service of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG).

     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 SPACEWARN Bulletin No. 518. It will not be repeated since an excellent source of trajectory- and science-related GPS information is at:

http://www.colorado.edu/geography/gcraft/notes/gps/gps_f.html

It provides many links to GPS related databases.

The latest addition to the fleet is GPS 2F-1 (2010-022A).

Russian Global Navigational (Positioning) Spacecraft, GLONASS constellation.

SPACEWARN requests updates/additions from readers to this list.

All GLONASS spacecraft are in the general Cosmos series. The Cosmos numbers invoked by USSPACECOM have often differed from the numbers (NNNN) associated in Russia; when different, the USSPACECOM Cosmos numbers are shown in parentheses. The corresponding GLONASS numbers are Russian numbers, followed by the numbers in parentheses that are sometimes attributed to them outside Russia.

The operating frequencies in MHz are computed from the channel number K. Frequencies (MHz) = 1602.0 + 0.5625K and L2 = 1246.0 + 0.4375K.

The standard format of the GLONASS situation last appeared in SPACEWARN Bulletin No. 545. It will not be repeated in view of the excellent updated source at: http://www.glonass-ianc.rsa.ru/ maintained by the Information-Analytical Center (IAC), Russian Space Agency.

According to IAC the latest additions to the fleet are 2010-007A, 2010-007B and 2010-007C.

Visually bright objects.

See http://www.space-track.org/perl/bulk_files.pl. Users must register. Conditions apply.

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

Designations         Common Name                  Decay Date (2010)

2010-014A(36511)     COSMOS 2462                       21 July 
2010-020B(36574)     WASEDA-SAT2                       12 July
2010-033B(36749)     SL-04 R/B                         03 July
2010-003A(36361)     PROGRESS-M 04M                    01 July

60-day Decay Predictions.

See http://www.space-track.org/perl/60day_decay_predict.pl. Users must register for access. Conditions apply

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.

Related NSSDC resources.

NSSDC/WDC for Satellite Information is an archival center for science data from many spacecraft. Many space physics datasets are on-line for electronic access through:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/space/

For off-line data, please contact the Request Office, NSSDC, Code 690.1, NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, U.S.A., for specific information (nssdc-request@listserv.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 parameters of many magnetospheric and heliospheric science-payload spacecraft may be obtained from:
http://nssdcftp.gsfc.nasa.gov/miscellaneous/orbits/

Other files of interest for Earth-centered spacecraft can be generated via the URL,
http://sscweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Programs related to the heliospheric spacecraft trajectories can be executed through the URL:
http://cohoweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/helios/heli.html

Magnetospheric, Planetary, and Astronomical science data from many spacecraft may be accessed through links from the URL:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/