From: Sven Grahn <svengrahn@telia.com> To: fpspace@friends-partners.org, SeeSat-L@satobs.org Subject: SZ-4 maneuvers Date: Sat, 04 Jan 2003 09:58:51 +0100 - There seems to have been two maneuvers since Dec 31. They permormed an orbit maneuver, to maintain its orbit on Jan 2. - The rate of decay seems to be higher in the new year. Have the solar panels on the orbital module deployed? The panels were deployed before they told the spacecraft to circularize its orbit to the operational altitude of 343 km . Here's the last 5 orbits for it SZ-4 1 27630U 02061A 03004.15077546 .00131386 00000-0 71248-3 0 289 2 27630 42.4059 306.3918 0004482 214.1227 347.1013 15.78858450 865 SZ-4 1 27630U 02061A 03003.99844563 .00076530 00000-0 41976-3 0 274 2 27630 42.4035 307.3255 0004623 208.0565 206.2623 15.78805419 845 SZ-4 1 27630U 02061A 03003.93500134 .00106505 00000-0 58134-3 0 260 2 27630 42.4040 307.7153 0004357 208.7425 204.5194 15.78797849 838 SZ-4 1 27630U 02061A 03003.81585541 .00106613 00000-0 58134-3 0 251 2 27630 42.4053 308.4617 0004385 213.2770 241.9403 15.78819946 819 SZ-4 1 27630U 02061A 03003.60834491 -.00017938 00000-0 -96417-4 0 248 2 27630 42.4097 309.7380 0004516 211.3498 142.9523 15.78747292 772 The drag terms and rate of decay are different for each orbit. One unknown is the solar wind. If the sun has a corona mass ejection, and the massive amount of particles come are way, this can crank up the drag on satellites. The amount of particles in the solar wind isn't a constant, so the amount of drag is not a constant either. At least that what I understand, I could be wrong. Kevin _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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