2002-053B (#27588) DM 3 - Stage In my last message "Fireball or reeentry..." I had say the decayer wa loaded with "tons of fuel".This may be not fully correct. Sid Olin send me this message about the BLOK DM-3: "You might be interested in this piece of news about the Blok-DM3 by RIA Novosti, posted on 27 November 2002": "The Russian Space Troops /KVR/are now determining and controlling the new orbital parameters, the RIA Novosti correspondent was told by the KVR. ...In the next few days the DM -3 acceleration unit may enter the upper atmosphere and burn because the orbit is still very low, said the KVR. 'To make it weigh less and fully to burn in the atmosphere 15 tonnes of the unit's unused propellant has been jettisoned and it is now a mere 3-tonne metal case', said the KVR." Vladimir Agapow send me a message a couple of hours ago: "The stage was not loading with tons of fuel at the time of reentry. The fuel had been venting immediately after the spacecraft and the stage separation.The venting had been completed within 24 hours after the launch. So the burning stage was empty and had a mass of about 2.5 tons." Let me show some question marks: The important second burn of the stage was planned for Nov 26, 00:17.22 UTC. It is plausible that the control people was working at this problem for one hour or so. The first very early released ELSET for the DM stage had an epoch 04;46 UTC. Also the following ELSETs shows no indication for a fuel dump. Remember: They had to vent rougly 14 - 15 tons hypergolic fuel. Could they had done it within a few hours? What have they done with the 2 BOZ motors? Many reports from Oregon, Washington State and others mentioned a extreme large number of decaying pieces - unusual for a "normal" decayer - indication for an explosion? It would be very interesting to hear from the Russian Space Troups some more details about there preparations for the decay of the DM-3 stage. BTW: The ballistic coefficient calculated during my reentry forecasts looks like a more massive object in comparison with an empty DM -stage. An explanation could be a constant spatial orientation of the stage until shortly before decay. Harro Harro.Zimmer@t-online.de Berlin, Germany > > > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Everything you'll ever need on one web page > from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts > http://uk.my.yahoo.com > ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Nov 29 2002 - 13:15:25 EST