Greetings SeeSat - We had scheduled a public satellite observing session with my county park system for the evening of Mar 1. Unfortunately, we have to submit program dates months in advance and the choice of Mar 1 was really just a dart throw. However, with Mir coming down sometime soon after, it would be really nice if I could twist some arms and reschedule for an evening when we can spot Mir. Feb 23rd looks interesting because, not only does Mir makes its highest evening pass near the original program date (according to the Heaven-above.com predictions I just ran (albeit not a great one), the ISS is predicted to make an even nicer one about a half hour earlier. The dilemma is, obviously, a lot will change between now and then. First, assuming STS-98 launches on time, the ISS will probably be boosted during the mission. But Mir, conversely, is decaying slowly on its own. Even more, with Progress having been launched carrying the propellant needed to bring Mir down sometime in the early to mid March time frame, I don't know if the plans are to adjust Mir's orbit incrementally, or whether the deorbit burns will be performed only as the target date for reentry approaches. Assuming it's the latter, does anyone want to hazard a guess how much the current Mir predictions for the DC area for Feb. 23rd will be off? My hope is any reboost of the ISS, along with Mir's natural orbit decay, will bring their passes closer together time wise. Is this a good guess? I fear I'm still throwing darts, but any help pointing me in the right direction would be very much appreciated. Jim Cook Germantown, MD 39.2N, 77.3W ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jan 26 2001 - 08:29:24 PST