Russell Eberst's observations of 2007 Apr 06-07 UTC have enabled significant improvements in several of the orbits of the IGS eastern plane objects. For the radar, I needed only to hold the rate decay of constant, to get a reliable-looking fit: IGS-R2 0.0 0.0 0.0 3.3 v 1 30587U 07005B 07097.05086314 .00002566 00000-0 10000-3 0 01 2 30587 97.3429 217.9882 0002603 325.5995 34.5074 15.26003617 09 Arc 2007 Apr 04.96 - 07.06, WRMS residuals = 0.016 deg David Brierley's 07005A of Apr 05 UTC and Russell's 0700515 of Apr 07 UTC appear to be the same object, which I continue to suspect is 06037A: IGS-O2 0.0 0.0 0.0 5.7 v 1 70000U 07097.00870338 .00002569 00000-0 10000-3 0 08 2 70000 97.3400 217.9492 0002000 98.7299 261.4166 15.26040798 00 Arc 2007 Apr 05.05 - 07.02, WRMS residuals = 0.020 deg Russell's 0700599 of Apr 05 UTC appears to be the same as his 0700516 of Apr 07 UTC. His three points yield this approximate orbit, which I suspect is that of the experimental optical payload of the 07005 launch: IGS-Oexp 1 70002U 07097.02414918 .00002563 00000-0 10000-3 0 04 2 70002 97.3400 217.4138 0002000 125.8665 234.2760 15.25963904 03 Arc 2007 Apr 05.00 - 07.04, WRMS residuals = 0.017 deg Russell's 0700500 of Apr 04 UTC appears to be the same object as his 0700514 of Apr 06 UTC. His three points yield this approximate orbit: 1 70001U 07096.98190564 .00026728 00000-0 10000-2 0 03 2 70001 97.2200 217.6604 0010590 270.0001 90.0025 15.27302813 09 Arc 2007 Apr 04.96 - 06.99, WRMS residuals = 0.003 deg Its intrinsic magnitude is bright; therefore, I suspect it to be one the large fairing pieces - most likely of 07005, since it has not decayed as much as the 06037 fairings should have. Also, I note that Russell's 9900000 of Apr 06 UTC, appears to be near the 06037/07005 plane. Russell, did it travel in the same direction as 06037/07005? I need to analyze 0700513, but have run out of time this morning. Ted Molczan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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