Tonight, Russell Eberst, Bjorn Gimle and Peter Wakelin detected the manoeuvre that had been expected to occur near this date. They reported the object running more than 2.5 min late. Using their observations, I have narrowed the time of the manoeuvre to one of two perigee passages on 2004 Aug 26 UTC: 15:21:17 UTC or 16:58:58 UTC, resulting in these preliminary orbits: 1 70000U 04240.85819061 .00014500 00000-0 19570-3 0 03 2 70000 98.0110 301.1922 0531000 24.6838 337.8809 14.71855468 03 1 70000U 04240.85818665 .00014500 00000-0 19570-3 0 02 2 70000 98.0110 301.1946 0530000 24.6838 337.8764 14.71992008 00 They differ in their predicted times of passage by about 8 s per day since epoch. In about one hour, I have a poor pass in a bad sky, so I am unlikely to be able to contribute any obs tonight. Ted Molczan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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