Re: Fate of Lockheed Martin Athena 2 and Ikonos 1 satelliteunknown

Ralph McConahy (rmcconahy@earthlink.net)
Wed, 28 Apr 1999 18:37:51 -0700

Previous discussion:

>>> >>From a Kevin Fetter posting:
>>> >IKONOS 1
>>> >1 28000U 99XXXX   99117.80454155  .00000000  00000-0  00000-0 0     0
>>> >2 28000  98.1840 185.3400 0010520  69.9850 279.8240 14.62686263    04
>>>
>>Philip Chien wrote:
>>> this is incorrect.  It's the orbit of a satellite launching to the
>>> North-Northwest from Vandenberg which would be a violation of the range
>>> rules.  The Athena/Ikonos launch was to the South-Southwest.
>
>"Bj–rn Gimle" <b_gimle@algonet.se> and others said:
>
>>No, it's not. My predictions showed a S-N pass around 19:47 UT at 59 N
>
>yup.  My fault.  I was half asleep and fully non-functional when I crunched
>the orbit.  The funny thing is Justin Ray (Fla Today Online) and I were
>chatting the previous week about with a Titan IV investigation underway we
>really didn't need to have another failure investigation to follow at the
>same time .... ARGH!  Plus the technical conference "Space Congress" is in
>town, plus the dress rehearsal for the next shuttle flight, plus the
>Milstar launch on Friday, etc. etc.  It's a busy week and my cloning
>machine's on the blink.
>
>No new details on what happened to Athena / Ikonos but I may get some more
>details later today.  I checked the sat catalog report and so far nothing
>reported in orbit from this launch.  So far each of the "Civilian Spy Sats"
>(Earthwatch, Ikonos) has had major failures ...  The conspiracist in me
>wonders if they're related ...
>


I'm a little confused about this. Did it launch to the north or south? On
the web page:

http://www.flatoday.com/space/today/042799k.htm

A spokesman for Lockheed Martin was asked and replied:

Question: Please give us additional details from what you know from
telemetry. Did the upper stage complete its second burn and did the
spacecraft separate?

Larry Price, Lockheed Martin's director of small launch vehicle programs:
"We have telemetry until nominal loss of signal (LOS) from Vandenberg. We
are analyzing all of that telemetry currently. Spacecraft deployment was
planned over Malindi in Africa and we don't have that telemetry. So we are
analyzing from the information that we do have."

=============

It seems that in order to travel over Africa that it did have to be launched
toward the south. Is this right?

   Ralph McConahy
   34.8829N  117.0064W  670m