Report time 17:00 UTC
1983-114D (#14520) MOLNIYA 1-59 R/B 2
SPACECOM'S FINAL REPORT - prepared Jan 25, 04:10 UTC - shows the decay on
24 January, 23:09 UTC +/- 12 minutes (26.6°N, 136.3°E)
on a descending pass over the Pacific
It was a very difficult decayer. In the past we have seen some "catastrophic"
decays of these RB's, with breakups and an immediate decay of the larger piece
an so on. The analysis of all 01024... TLEs shows a minimum error at the epoch
18:23:58.90 UTC and an useless last ELSET 01024.939...
Based on a data set derived for the epoch 18:23:58.90 UTC my final analysis
delivers with MPM + REENTRY the decay on
24 January, 23:05 UTC +/- 22 minutes (38.17°N, 126.25°E)
on the same southbound pass crossing Korea. The empirical derived ballistic
coefficient for day 01024 is only about 1/3 of the "theoretical" value, an
indication for a earlier breakup, maybe during SPACECOM'S "lost period" between
01015 and 01022....
Harro
Harro.Zimmer@t-online.de
Berlin, Germany
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jan 25 2001 - 09:34:31 PST