SB SAREX @ AMSAT $STS-79.021 STS-79 SAREX Bulletin Number 21 Silver Spring, Maryland USA September 25, 1996 @ 1500 UTC Each of the three schools selected for a scheduled SAREX contact on STS-79 met with outstanding success. Over the weekend while Atlantis was docked with Mir, Jay Apt, N5QWL, spoke with the students of Andover Middle School (Andover, Kansas) through the AMSAT Telebridge Network. AMSAT member Gerald Klatzko, ZS6BTD, in Johannesburg, South Africa served as the volunteer ground station. Jay answered 22 of the students' questions on the one pass. Reports from radio amateurs around the world continue to be posted on the sarex@amsat.org Internet e-mail list. Most observe accurate predictions from the orbital elements provided here, as well as strong signals from the orbiter. A report by Philip Chien, KC4YER, invites one to the NASA Shuttle Web to see a high resolution image of John Blaha, KC5TZQ, using space station Mir's amateur radio: http://shuttle.nasa.gov/sts-79/images/esc/s79h5150.jpg and to check out the Web page by SAREX Principal Investigator Matt Bordelon, KC5BTL, for electronic images of Jay Apt and Valeri Korzun operating the Mir two-meter radio: http://www.phoenix.net/~mbordel/jscarc/news/index.html and http://www.phoenix.net/~mbordel/jscarc/images/s79e5149low.jpg Earlier today, CDR Bill Readdy and PLT Terry Wilcutt conducted a test of the small vernier jets on Atlantis to collect engineering data for flight controllers who will oversee the reboost of the Hubble Space Telescope at the completion of the STS-82 mission next February to service the astronomical instrument. Atlantis' [perigee] actually was lowered by about 3 1/2 miles, but Hubble's orbit will be raised about 10 miles next year as it sits locked on a servicing platform in Discovery's cargo bay. The use of vernier jets to reboost Hubble, rather than larger maneuvering jets, is expected to reduce the stress on Hubble's delicate solar arrays. Mission Specialists Jay Apt, N5QWL, and Carl Walz, KC5TIE, began to stow equipment aboard Atlantis and in the double Spacehab module housed in the shuttle's cargo bay, including the Active Rack Isolation System, or ARIS, which was used during the mission to collect data on how experiments may be kept immune from microgravity disturbances, like those which will be conducted on the International Space Station. All the rest of the astronauts' gear was stowed and buttoned up as the crew members neared the end of their tenth day on orbit. Until the VHF radio stow is confirmed, here are updated orbital element sets courtesy Gil Carman of the NASA Johnson Space Center: Mir 1 16609U 86017A 96268.43238672 .00004561 00000-0 57048-4 0 6823 2 16609 51.6511 343.9616 0011067 198.4087 161.6595 15.62034554605512 STS-79 1 24324U 96057A 96269.26374461 .00004692 00000-0 69160-4 0 9219 2 24324 51.6498 339.7639 0012980 169.5658 190.5772 15.63818685 1418 Satellite: STS-79 Catalog number: 24324 Epoch time: 96269.26374461 = yrday.fracday Element set: 921 Inclination: 51.6498 deg RA of node: 339.7639 deg Eccentricity: .0012980 Arg of perigee: 169.5658 deg Mean anomaly: 190.5772 deg Mean motion: 15.63818685 rev/day Decay rate: 4.69200E-05 rev/day^2 Epoch rev: 141 Checksum: 359 Atlantis' astronauts are scheduled to begin a nine hour sleep period at 17:54 UTC. Atlantis continues to orbit the Earth at an altitude of 240 statute miles in excellent condition. [Radio amateurs are encouraged to relay these SAREX bulletins to their local packet BBS as long as the Bulletin IDentification (BID) is preserved. The BID is the character string beginning with the dollar sign ($), for example as in "SB SAREX @ AMSAT $STS-79.021" without the quotation marks.] Submitted by Pat Kilroy, WD8LAQ for Frank H. Bauer, KA3HDO and the SAREX Working Group. /EX ======================================================================== Patrick L. Kilroy Phone: 301-286-5910 Engineer (in motion) Fax: 301-286-1695 NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center E-mail: pat.kilroy@gsfc.nasa.gov Building 6, Code 311 WWW URL: http://arioch.gsfc.nasa.gov/ Greenbelt, Maryland 20771 310/310.html ========================================================================= . .