Peter Wakelin has reported observations made on Dec 13, which I have used in
these updates:
USA 198 259 X 16774 km
1 32378U 07060A 07347.70298699 .00000273 00000-0 27163-4 0 05
2 32378 60.0102 316.7088 5544157 287.2561 21.4044 4.77576618 05
Arc 2007 Dec 11.01 - 13.81, WRMS residuals = 0.012 deg
Centaur 224 X 16299 km
1 32379U 07060B 07347.83811522 .00041920 00000-0 19103-2 0 03
2 32379 60.7629 317.4582 5490058 285.5459 22.5500 4.90095032 01
Arc 2007 Dec 11.01 - 13.87, WRMS residuals = 0.022 deg
Bob Christy (of the U.K.) and Sven Grahn (of Sweden) made accurate radio
observations of the spacecraft soon after it reached orbit. Combining their data
with information about the intermediate orbit determined from visual
observations, enables reasonably accurate determination of the LEO parking
orbit:
209 X 262 km
1 32378U 07060A 07344.96844907 .00000000 00000-0 00000-0 0 04
2 32378 60.0091 318.1716 0040000 106.8858 180.0000 16.14000000 09
The orbit agrees to within several seconds of the time of closest approach,
which Bob and Sven determined by observing the effects of Doppler shift on the
radio signal. The apogee of the parking orbit intersects with the perigee of the
intermediate orbit, on 2007 Dec 10 at 23:14:34 UTC, 282 km above 56.145 S,
168.537 W.
Ted Molczan
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive:
http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Dec 14 2007 - 01:00:27 UTC