On 12/8/05, Ted Molczan <seesat@rogers.com> wrote: > I believe there is now general agreement that the object in question is not USA > 144. Also, I believe there is general agreement that its orbital perturbations > and optical behaviour (it rotates) suggests that it is debris-like. A low mass > decoy could also appear debris-like, and some folks, including myself, have come > to believe that it probably is a decoy. I doubt there is general agreement on > whether it is debris or a decoy, so it reasonable to expect some folks to > include "debris" in their name for the object, and others to include "decoy". > > I have just looked at Mike's latest orbital elements updates, and I see that he > has adopted my recommendation for 99028C / 25746, and is using the name "USA 144 > Deb". I will call it "Misty 2 Decoy". Here's how I currently list the objects from this launch (this will probably wrap atrociously, so please cut and paste into some kind of monospaced font) Int. desig. Cat. No. Period Incl. Apogee Perigee RCS 1999-028A 25744 US 148.5 63.4 3123 2695 N/A USA 144 (Misty 2) Launched (05/22/1999) 1999-028B 25745 US 87.5 63.4 165 141 58.8288 Titan 4B-12 2nd stage (LR91AJ11A) Launched (05/22/1999) Decayed [06/02/1999] 1999-028C 25746 US 92.2 63.4 390 376 N/A Misty 2 decoy Launched (05/22/1999) 1999-028D 25747 US 90.9 63.4 373 264 N/A USA 144 hardware Launched (05/22/1999) 1999-028E 25748 US 89.5 63.4 299 200 N/A USA 144 hardware Launched (05/22/1999) 1999-028F 25749 US 89.5 63.4 299 200 N/A USA 144 hardware Launched (05/22/1999) 1999-028G 25751 US 89.5 63.4 299 200 N/A USA 144 hardware Launched (05/22/1999) 1999-028H 25752 US 87.7 63.3 172 153 0.0745 USA 144 hardware Launched (05/22/1999) Decayed [02/20/2000] 1999-028J 25753 US 89.5 63.4 299 200 N/A USA 144 hardware Launched (05/22/1999) 1999-028K 25754 US 89.5 63.4 299 200 N/A USA 144 hardware Launched (05/22/1999) 1999-028L 25755 US 89.5 63.4 299 200 N/A USA 144 hardware Launched (05/22/1999) The orbital elements are mainly from Jonathan McDowell's table. I wonder about the other objects for this launch. The orbital elements are pretty low and if those are the original elements (within a couple of days of launch, according to epoch dates at Jonathan's website), they should have decayed a long time ago, but here they are still in orbit. This suggests E-G, J-L might be quite dense, perhaps some kind of payloads, certainly not fairings or other such high-surface-area-to-mass hardware. H started out quite low and came down pretty quickly. Also, some websites that carry Misty information suggest that A, the high-orbit object, is the decoy and C is the actual Misty payload. But if so, how and why did A get all the way up there on its own if it's merely a decoy? What's it decoying us all away from? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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