Re: Optical 30 January 2014

From: Marco Langbroek <marco.langbroek_at_online.nl>
Date: Sat, 01 Feb 2014 16:04:54 +0100
Greg Roberts schreef op 1-2-2014 15:40:

 > (4) USA 186 still in its elliptical orbit - ie apogee not yet dropped to
 >      about 400km - Marco expects this to happen around Feb 06 -
 >      unfortunately this may then mean the end of my summer observing
 >      window as altitude too low to clear low buildings before shadow entry.


USA 186 and USA 129 (if indeed de-orbitted in the past few days, as Greg's 
non-observaton suggests) have quite kept up to my predictions so far.

Between 12 November and now, USA 186 has moved its orbital plane by almost 10 
degrees (in terms of RAAN) from the primary West KH plane towards the secondary 
West KH plane. It will arrive there on Feb 6th at the current rate of RAAN 
drift, and I expect it to manoeuvre into a ~390 km near-circular orbit that 
date, restoring a sun-synchronous orbit very similar to USA 161 in the secondary 
East plane.

See my extended analysis:

http://sattrackcam.blogspot.nl/2014/02/usa-129-de-orbitted-and-usa-186-about.html

(and the links to earlier analysis in that post).

- Marco


-----
Dr Marco Langbroek  -  SatTrackCam Leiden, the Netherlands.
e-mail: sattrackcam_at_langbroek.org

Cospar 4353 (Leiden):   52.15412 N, 4.49081 E (WGS84), +0 m ASL
Cospar 4354 (De Wilck): 52.11685 N, 4.56016 E (WGS84), -2 m ASL
Station (b)log: http://sattrackcam.blogspot.com
Twitter: @Marco_Langbroek
-----
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Received on Sat Feb 01 2014 - 15:04:58 UTC

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