Op 12-4-2021 om 19:00 schreef C. Bassa via Seesat-l: > The NRO just posted a tweet indicating that NROL-82 "is targeted for > no-earlier-than April 25, 12:39-15:57PDT". > https://twitter.com/NatReconOfc/status/1381648189267271680 > > This launch window correspond to 19:39 to 22:57UTC, and for a > sun-synchronous is consistent with the Eastern plane of KH-11 > satellites, currently occupied by only USA 224 [37348/11002A]. [note: April 25 above in Cees' mail should read April 26!] This is interesting. If the USA 224 plane is indeed targetted, I expect launch near 21:00 - 21:30 UTC. The orbital plane of USA 224 passes over Vandenberg LC-6 at 21:20 UT (April 26). In 2011, USA 224 was launched some 20 minutes before the orbital plane of it's predecessor USA 161 passed over the launch site. We can then also expect, if it follows historic KH-11 constellation patterns (see https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2013/09/past-and-future-of-kh-11-keyholeevolved.html), that after insertion of NROL-82 into the KH-11 primary East plane and a period of checkout, USA 224 currently occupying that plane will be moved to a plane 10-20 degrees more eastwards (the secondary East plane) and lower it's apogee considerably, to near ~400 km. By the way: if we indeed see this return to the historic KH-11 orbital constellation, then this also strongly begs the question what USA 290 (2019-004A) is. USA 290 was thought to be a KH-11 by analysts but surprisingly went into an unexpected, distinctly non- KH-11 orbit. It is non-polar (73.6 degrees inclined), non Sun-Synchronous, and unlike what you expect for a KH-11 or indeed any IMINT mission. The identification as a KH-11 therefore never has been sitting well with me. If NROL-82 goes into an old-fashioned KH-11 orbit again, then I am more and more convinced that USA 290 is not a KH-11. - Marco ----- Dr Marco Langbroek - SatTrackCam Leiden, the Netherlands. e-mail: sattrackcam_at_langbroek.org launchtower: http://launchtower.langbroek.org Station (b)log: http://sattrackcam.blogspot.com Twitter: _at_Marco_Langbroek ----- _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Tue Apr 13 2021 - 08:38:46 UTC
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Tue Apr 13 2021 - 13:38:46 UTC