Hi Yes, it is brass. I was looking for information on the original tracking station on Huahine that I visited and read some early articles on the LAGEOS that said it was "planned" to have a depleted uranium core. The ranging site was pretty cool in 1986. The laser and observatory that I put up photos for and a control room that was two refrigerated semi truck boxes full of surplus Apollo mission computers and consoles that would now probably fit on two laptops. I have some photos around. The really sad thing is that when the station was discontinued and a new one built on the island of Tahiti all this equipment was deemed surplus but not worth returning to the US so the US government in their infinite wisdom took the fine scopes and.... Dumped them in the ocean ! Anyway that is the story I got on my next visit. So, the question remains... Any idea how this thing will eventually reenter? Will it circle for days or months as a glowing ball in the upper atmosphere? Will it become more eccentric and make some really deep dives into the atmosphere before decay? Will it still have some orbital velocity when it hits the dirt or just terminal atmospheric velocity whatever that might be? Dale _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Aug 31 2010 - 17:01:45 UTC