Ron Baalke (baalke@jpl.nasa.gov) has today posted the following message to a NASA mailing list: > Mubende Hit By Rocket Fragment, Says Police > Frederick Kiwanuka > New Vision (Kampala) > April 10, 2002 > > POLICE yesterday said the alien spherical object that landed in > Kasambya, Kikandwa sub-county in Mubende district last month was not a > meteorite but a suspected rocket fragment from outer space. > > Police spokesman Asuman Mugenyi, whose personnel collected the object > for scrutiny, said yesterday that they were still scrutinising the > object whose whereabouts he did not disclose. > > Full story here: > > http://allafrica.com/stories/200204100271.html Other than "last month", there is no report of a day or time for the fall of this object. However, I have checked all last month's major decayers and come up with one very attractive candidate. This is the GStar 1 Ariane 3 rocket (#15679 = 85- 35 C) that decayed on March 27. The final elset for this reads: GStar 1 Ariane 3 r 261 x 113 km 1 15679U 85035C 02086.67815157 .86040068 -35625-4 91360-3 0 1504 2 15679 6.4985 118.5911 0112803 299.1047 61.4789 16.32169231222178 and the final decay analyses posted at the time are: Source Prediction made Predicted decay at Latitude Longitude UTC UTC deg deg SpaceCom Mar 27 19:07 Mar 27 17:43 +-7m 0.0 N 25.0 E SatEvo Mar 27 23:15 Mar 27 17:37 +-10m 3.0 S 1.4 E Using Mike McCants's LATLONG program and a SatEvo-derived elset that differs only slightly from that above, I get the following track for the minutes following these times. UTC lat. long. h m s 17 42 0 0.8 S 20.9 E 17 42 30 0.5 S 22.8 E 17 43 0 0.3 S 24.7 E 17 43 30 0.1 S 26.7 E 17 44 0 0.2 N 28.6 E 17 44 30 .4 N 30.6 E 17 45 0 .7 N 32.5 E 17 45 30 .9 N 34.4 E 17 46 0 1.1 N 36.4 E 17 46 30 1.4 N 38.3 E 17 47 0 1.6 N 40.2 E Note that Mubende, Uganda, is at 0.55 N, 31.37 E, very close indeed to the interpolated track position for 17:44:42 UTC. Can anyone supply supporting info regarding the date/time? Alan -- Alan Pickup / COSPAR 2707: 55.8968N 3.1989W +208m (WGS84 datum) Edinburgh / SatEvo & elsets: http://www.wingar.demon.co.uk/satevo/ Scotland / Decay Watch: http://www.wingar.demon.co.uk/satevo/dkwatch/ * ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Wed Apr 10 2002 - 15:03:59 EDT