Re: Decay watch: January 27
Ed Cannon (ecannon@mail.utexas.edu)
Thu, 28 Jan 1999 02:19:33 -0600
Alan Pickup (alan@wingar.demon.co.uk) wrote:
> The latest elset for the ETS-7 H2 rocket ...
I managed to see it for several seconds Wednesday morning (just
before 13:00 UTC 27 Jan) before it was hidden by clouds for the
rest of its pass. (The same thing happened to the ISS a few
minutes earlier.) I was observing from the deck of the house
of some friends for whom I was house-sitting.
Tuesday evening as I was looking for the COMETS H2 rocket
(21576/98-11B) from the Univ. of Texas at Austin campus, I
couldn't see it when first expected. Then I saw a *very*
bright flash about where it was supposed to be, and within a
couple of seconds it did become one-power visible. I noticed
before with the TRMM/ETS-7 H2 rocket, especially at first,
that it had a bright flash in the middle of a maximum, so I'm
wondering if all H2s have a flat, shiny surface.
Alan also included:
> ROCSAT-1 OrbAdjMod 555 x 133 km
> 1 25617U 99002B 99027.57642451 .09032928 15585-6 53824-3 0 70
> 2 25617 34.6905 281.0123 0313326 209.4838 148.7818 15.75297909 88
>
> The latter object, the final (3rd) stage of the Athena 1 rocket, will
> decay at January 29.74 +-0.5d according to my calculations.
I was fortunate enough to see this one Wednesday evening (early
Thursday UTC) from the parking lot of my apartment. It was
easy one-power for most of the pass, and in a hurry of course.
It went over just after 00694/63-47A (perigee pass) and just
before UARS (21701/91-63B), which was fainter than usual.
Thank you Alan for the "Heads up!" alerts on objects like these!
Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA