The big question regards Gagarin. Shall the 'Columbus of the Cosmos' be allowed to risk his life on another spaceflight? Most of the Soviet leadership are against it, but Gagarin himself wants to train and fly again. Later in the day the cosmonauts have an idiotic argument with IAKM on high-G centrifuge runs for female cosmonauts. This is the first cosmonaut revolt against the policies and practices of IAKM.

MSC decided in favor of an "all-battery" LEM (i.e., batteries rather than fuel cells in both stages of the vehicle) and notified Grumman accordingly. Pratt and Whitney's subcontract for fuel cells would be terminated on April 1; also, Grumman would assume parenthood of GE's contract (originally let by Pratt and Whitney) for the electrical control assembly. Additional Details: here....

Former Lavochkin bureau, part of Chelomei, regained status of a separate design bureau with former Korolev deputy GN Babakin as its head. By the end of 1965 all materials on the E-6, Ye-8, and planetary probes were passed by Korolev to the Lavochkin Bureau, who took over responsibility for all future lunar and planetary unmanned probes.

What at first seemed to be a success, very much needed by the L1 program, ended in failure. The Proton booster lifted off in 18 m/s winds, -3 deg C temperatures, and into very low clouds - it disappeared from view at only 150 m altitude. Aircraft at 9, 10, and 11 km altitude reported the cloud deck topped 8300 m, with 1.5 to 2.0 km visibility. The spacecraft was successfully launched into a 330,000 km apogee orbit 180 degrees away from the moon. On reentry, the guidance system failed, and the planned double skip maneuver to bring the descent module to a landing in the Soviet Union was not possible. Ustinov had ordered the self-destruct package to be armed and the capsule blew up 12 km above the Gulf of Guinea. Kamanin disagreed strongly with this decision; the spacecraft could have still been recovered in the secondary area by Soviet naval vessels after a 20 G reentry. The decsion was made to recover the spacecraft in the future whenever possible.
Officially: Solar Orbit (Heliocentric). Study of remote regions of circumterrestrial space, development of new on-board systems and units of space stations.

Manned two crew. Docked with Salyut 6. Delivery to the Salyut-6 station of the first international 'Intercosmos' team consisting of A.A. Gubarev (USSR) and V. Remek (Czechoslovak Socialist Republic) to carry out scientific research and experiments jointly developed by Soviet a nd Czechoslovak specialists.

TKS manned ferry spacecraft from the cancelled Almaz OPS-4 mission. Flown unmanned to the Salyut 7 space station. Docked with Salyut 7 on 4 March 1983. Separated from Salyut 7 on 14 August. The VA re-entry capsule separated and the space station deorbited itself on September 19, 1983 at 0:28 GMT. The VA capsule continued in space for four more days, demonstrating autonomous flight, before successfully re-entering on 23 August 1983. Returned 350 kg of material from the station. Additional Details: here....

Stationed at 79 deg E. Investigation of outer space; experiments in relaying telegraph and telephone information in the centimetre wavelength range. Positioned in geosynchronous orbit at 80 deg E in 1984-1988 As of 28 August 2001 located at 75.35 deg E drifting at 0.041 deg E per day. As of 2007 Mar 10 located at 69.92E drifting at 0.020W degrees per day.

Stationed at 19.2 deg E; European coverage. Astra 1B provides TV coverage to Western Europe. The satellite is owned and operated by Société Europíenne des Satellites (SES), a private company formed in 1985. Astra 1B is the second in a network of four satellites. SES acquired Astra 1B from DBS Crimson Satellite Associates while still under construction by GE Astro Space (as Satcom K3). Astra 1B is colocated with Astra 1A, and doubled the number of channels provided by the Astra network. Spacecraft: GE 5000 platform.3-axis stabilisation with momentum wheels, magnetic torquers, Earth sensors and 20 blowdown monopropellant hydrazine thrusters. Solar arrays provide 4850 W BOL, 4 50 Ahr NiH batteries. GEO insertion provided by 2 500N bipropellant motors. Payload: 16 Ku-band transponders (with six spares) Positioned in geosynchronous orbit at 19 deg E in 1991-1999 As of 5 September 2001 located at 19.20 deg E drifting at 0.002 deg W per day. As of 2007 Mar 10 located at 92.40W drifting at 6.354W degrees per day.

Earth imaging for weather, climatology, atmospheric physics; 4 deg E. Geostationary meteorological satellite, operating within the world-wide network of the World Weather Watch of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Its main missions are: imaging in the visible, infrared and water vapour region of the spectrum. Dat a reception from so called Data Collection Platforms (DCPs); data distribution to meteorological services and other interested parties (research institutes, etc). Launch time 2336:00 UT. Positioned in geosynchronous orbit at 4 deg W in 1991; 1 deg W in 1991; 4 deg W in 1991-1992; 1 deg W in 1992; 8 deg W in 1993-1997; 9 deg W in 1997-1998; 63 deg E in 1998-1999 As of 5 September 2001 located at 62.77 deg E drifting at 0.000 deg E per day. As of 2007 Mar 1 located at 63.15E drifting at 0.006E degrees per day.

Solar and space physics. Conduct of comprehensive investigations of the sun under the Koronas-I international project developed by Russian and Ukranian experimts in cooperation with specialists from Poland, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Bulgaria, France, and the United Kingdom.

Carried Astro 2 astronomy payload with 3 UV telescopes.(attached to Endeavour).Payloads: Ultraviolet Astronomy (ASTRO) 2; Middeck Active Control Experiment (MACE); Protein Crystal Growth—Thermal Enclosure System (PCG-TES) 03; Protein Crystal Growth—Single-Locker Thermal Enclosure System (PCG-STES) 02; Commercial Materials Dispersion Apparatus Minilab/Instrumentation Technology Associates, Inc. Experiments (CMIX) 03; Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment (SAREX) II; two getaway special experiments.

On 2.03.1997 at 0644 UTC the return capsule of the Soyuz-TM24 made a safe landing in Kazakhstan not far from Arkalyk (47degr49min North; 69degr24min East). At abt 4 mins later the first helicopter of the search- and rescue team reached that position. The return operation and landing took place without problems. During the return operation Soyuz-TM24 communicated via the Eastern tracking stations in Russia and probably Altair-2 over 96 dgs East. Obviously Altair-1 was (or: is?) not operational.

Last week of Mir'97 and Main Expedition Mir 22:

The fire in the night from 22 to 23.02 put its stamp on this last week due to the pollution of the Mir's atmosphere during the first days and the extra attention the crew had to give to the damaged oxygen-generator and cables. For a long time there was the smell caused by the fire. One of the cosmonauts spoke about the smell of 'roasted turkey'. Some crew members suffered from some irritation of the bronchia, a dry throat and sleeping problems. Nobody was hurt with the exception of Korzun who had a very small burn on his hand. Ewald had already executed the majority of the Mir'97 experiments and the events did not significantly influence that program. German project managers were satisfied about the successful results and conclusion of the mission. During this week there has been a lot of radio traffic on 2 frequencies simultaneously: the Russians used 143.625 mc and Ewald and Linenger 130.165 mc. For some planned TV sessions, i.e. for the RTL children's programme Captain Bluebear and about a contest for drawings by children with the wife of the German President Herzog they did not use the geostationary satellites but direct TV transceivers on lower frequencies. For phone during these sessions Ewald used the UKW-2 130.165 mc.

Siriusses: The new crew, Tsibliyev and Lazutkin, the 23d M.E. to Mir, and Jerry Linenger will have to do a lot of work in the near future. In fact there are still a lot of experiments in the framework of Mir'97 to be done: this had been planned and this work got the designation Mir'97E, the letter 'E' standing for 'Extension'.

Progress-M33: This old freighter is still flying autonomously until her 2d docking at Mir. That will take place on 4.03.97. Tsibliyev got orders to control the approach and docking manually with the remote-control system TORU. There has also been an instruction to leave Progress-M33's hatch closed after docking. Kaleri asked TsUP to consider the possibility to open the hatch and to use the still available room in the spherical part of Progress-M33 to stow stuff no longer needed: especially the considerable amount of human waste. During the long period with a crew of 6 the quantity of this increased enormously.

Chris v.d. Berg, NL-9165/A-UK3202.

Earlier this week one of the television cameras aboard Zarya was activated to allow engineers to view the small crane mounted on the side of the module that has been determined to be in a 'soft dock' configuration rather than the expected 'hard dock' position. Additional Details: here....

Orbital Patriot Target Vehicle (PTV); served as an intercept target for the Lower Tier Project Office Patriot missile defense system. The PTV was launched from Fort Wingate Launch Complex-96 into White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. It flew a southerly trajectory over New Mexicoand was intercepted by the Patriot Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) interceptor system during reentry.

Dual communications satellite payload placed initially in a supersynchronous transfer orbit. Falcon 9 reached a 174 km x 953 km parking orbit 9 minutes after launch, and then made a second burn over the equator to a 391 km x 63452 km x 24.8 deg orbit. The two payloads were 2000 kg Boeing BSS-702SP models with XIPS-25 ion thrusters as their main propulsion system. ABS-3A, for Asia Broadcast Satellite of Hong Kong, was launched directly attached to the lower satellite, Eutelsat 115 West B, until it separated from the stack following stage 2 second cutoff.

See Tiankun 1. China's CASIC missile agency launched the KT-2, a new orbital launch vehicle developed by CASIC's 4th Academy. It placed a small satellite, Tiankun-1, in orbit. Tiankun 1, built by the CASIC 2nd Academy (CCMETA), was a test of a new satellite bus and probably has a mass of a few hundred kg.