USA 129 post-manoeuvre elements

From: Ted Molczan <ssl3molcz_at_rogers.com>
Date: Tue, 4 Feb 2014 06:56:19 -0500
Greg Roberts recovered USA 129 (96072A / 24680) on 2014 Feb 03 UTC by means of a full planar search, yielding
observations on two consecutive passes:

http://satobs.org/seesat/Feb-2014/0024.html

The solution is somewhat unstable, but I was able to fit a realistic orbit over the span of Greg's observations from Jan
27 - Feb 03:

USA 129                                                  240 X 736 km
1 24680U 96072A   14034.80266817  .00081464  00000-0  42669-3 0    00
2 24680  97.5639  90.4119 0361370 157.2331 204.5401 15.24852387    08
Arc 20140127.84-0203.86 WRMS resid 0.017 totl 0.009 xtrk

I am not certain that the manoeuvre had occurred as of the Jan 27 observations. It seems probable. Further observations
may lead to a more confident appraisal.

Instead of the suspected reboost, we find that the perigee has been reduced by 67 km. The resulting value is somewhat
below that of operational KH spacecraft.

Ted Molczan


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Received on Tue Feb 04 2014 - 11:57:32 UTC

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