In the course of their asteroid hunting activities Rob McNaught and Gordon Garrad, both occasional contributers came across a 15 mag fast moving ( for them)object which turns out to be something is orbit around the Earth. The observed magnitude was 15.5 or so, but thats near apogee Jonathon McDowell suggests its a lost prognsz satellite. This satellite series was a russian magnetospheric satellite. The orbital elements below were derived by Bill Gray of Guide 7 fame, from 26 observations by McNaught, garrad and a japanese station, using there normal reduction techniques ( positions accurate to 1 arc second, time to a second). I have copies of the observations, In Minor Planet Centre format used in reporting asteroid observations if any one wants to do their own analysis The TLE equivalent for this is below. I have "borrowed" the catalog number of prognosz 1 as a matter of convenience, and the checksums wont work ( I know this doesnt affect Mike McCant's HIGHFLY The brightness at perigee could be as bright as mag 10. GlO10 mag 3.2 18400 by 192000 km 1 05941U 72029A 00059.80000000 .00000000 +0000-0 +00000-0 0 0001 2 05941 062.7017 350.6869 7719220 002.4567 169.3679 00.241959489 00 Querying OIG about the prognosz numbers I could find produces the following results. Most of the members of the series have decayed, and none are currently being tracked. Given the time since last elements I wonder if any are actually in orbit. The other question raised by this discovery is what does "No current elements" mean in this case, as the mag 15.5 at apogee seems quite observable with the optical tracking network of US SPACECOM. Have they made a deliberate decision NOT to track it?. Or Did they just loose it. Tony Beresford Adelaide South Australia PROGNOZ 1 No current elements 1 05941U 72029A 75236.96611111 -.00000067 +00000-0 +00000-0 0 00016 2 05941 064.9280 253.5400 9357800 284.7000 351.6140 00.24939387005147 PROGNOZ 3 No current elements 1 06364U 73009A 76188.08625000 +.00001878 +00000-0 +00000-0 0 00017 2 06364 065.0020 197.0800 9317300 290.7900 090.5950 00.24962625005930 PROGNOZ 5 Decayed: 1979/07/12 No current elements 1 09557U 76112A 78118.99998843 +.00002215 +00000-0 +00000-0 0 00022 2 09557 066.8600 147.4100 9007100 278.7700 344.9060 00.25194364013878 PROGNOZ 6 No current elements 1 10370U 77093A 78094.25000000 +.00000159 +00000-0 +00000-0 0 00022 2 10370 074.3590 023.5000 9220000 294.6600 078.0550 00.25337865000476 PROGNOZ 8 Decayed: 1984/12/28 1 12116U 80103A 80359.27778759 +.00002150 +00000-0 +10000-3 0 00038 2 12116 065.8300 193.2399 9302998 290.8199 001.2469 00.25316500000003 PROGNOZ 10 Decayed: 1994/01/12 1 15661U 85033A 85349.94326365 -.00002203 +00000-0 +10000-3 0 00022 2 15661 076.7634 320.1054 8842555 317.1804 001.3489 00.24896840000590 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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