Updated 18084C / 43673 elements

From: Ted Molczan via Seesat-l <seesat-l_at_satobs.org>
Date: Sat, 8 Aug 2020 05:04:35 -0400
Leo Barhorst and Cees Bassa detected 18084C / 43673 in its post-breakup orbit on 2020 Jul 21, as an
UNID. On July 23, the USAF confirmed the breakup, and reported that it "likely occurred on
July 12, 2020, between 0700 and 1000 UTC", and that 51 pieces from the event were being
actively tracked.

As I write, the USAF has yet to issue post-breakup elements of 18084C / 43673 or any of its
fragments. My guess is that they are still analyzing debris from the breakup of 11037B / 37756 on
May 8, of which 210 fragments have been catalogued - most recently on Aug 03.

Below are updated elements of 18084C / 43673 based on additional observations by Cees on Jul 29 and
Aug 08, and Leo on Aug 04. In each case, it was detected as an UNID, due to the lack of current
TLEs, and later identified through analysis.

18084C                                                   588 X 614 km
1 43673U 18084C   20219.96484763  .00000418  00000-0  45465-4 0    09
2 43673  97.9006 335.0128 0019021 328.8351  31.1736 14.87998394    04
Arc 20200721.97-0806.98 WRMS resid 0.052 totl 0.015 xtrk

In the course of the analysis, I found that the observations Leo reported on July 31, were of the
D object, not the C object. Here they are with the correct IDs:

43674 18 084D   0796 G 20200731232120500 17 25 0437036+560010 37 S
43674 18 084D   0796 G 20200731232124306 17 25 0445860+562257 37 F
43674 18 084D   0796 G 20200731232126984 17 25 0452109+563759 37 F

Ted Molczan

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Received on Sat Aug 08 2020 - 04:05:17 UTC

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