A reliable observer, who prefers not to be identified, has reported OTV 3 running significantly ahead of the epoch 14223.82863608 TLE within the past few hours, which tends to confirm Brad Young's no-show report from last night. The new orbit appears not to be as low as the speculative one I posted earlier. I now speculate that the apogee was lowered to achieve a more circular orbit, probably at the first perigee following Cees Bassa's observation of last night. That would have been on Aug 11 at about 21:38:52 UTC, within range of AFSCN New Hampshire. The following elements were obtained by propagating the epoch 14223.82863608 TLE and then adjusting mean motion and eccentricity to match the information received today: 319 X 332 km 1 70000U 14223.90199074 .00024143 00000-0 15546-3 0 09 2 70000 43.5037 153.2745 0010000 48.7346 7.8048 15.82320000 09 At the time of Brad's attempted observation, this TLE would have run about 1.5 min ahead of the epoch 14223.82863608 TLE, and about 1 deg off-track low. If Brad was using his large binoculars, it could easily have passed just outside his FOV. Although there is a reasonable basis for the above TLE, it is somewhat speculative; therefore, prospective observers are advised to make generous allowance for time and track errors - at least 2 min. time and 3 deg track tonight. Ted Molczan _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Tue Aug 12 2014 - 16:38:54 UTC
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