Hi Ed and list, Ed wrote : "One sidebar of one article mentions that in April 2003 a metal sphere 75 cm in diameter fell in a sugar cane field in the south of Guatemala." I don't know if this sphere has been linked to a specific reentry but I found its origin thanks to archived SatEvo decay lists and OIG elsets. The spherical tank surely comes from a Centaur IIA stage from the Atlas IIAS rocket that launched the Intelsat 806 comm sat on Feb. 28, 1998 (USSC #25240). Like Delta 2 second stages, this tank is probably an helium tank located at the bottom of the stage : http://www.lerc.nasa.gov/WWW/PAO/html/centaur.htm Alan predicted its reentry at 15h34 UT on April 27, 2003 with an uncertainty of +/- 2 h. But he was right on when he estimated the decay location as being close to Honduras. Here is the OIG elset I used in my investigation. At the time of decay predicted by Alan, the object was right on target ! ATLAS 2AS CENTAUR R/B Decayed: 2003/04/27 1 25240U 98014B 03117.33588757 .17643539 -15810-4 91280-3 0 9095 2 25240 22.4458 322.2292 0104969 21.1631 339.6159 16.24084768137794 -- Daniel Deak representant, projet spatial Starshine L'Avenir, Quebec COSPAR site 1747 : 45.7275°N, 72.3526°W, 191 m., UTC-5:00 Site en francais sur les satellites: French-language satellite web site : http://www.obsat.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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