An expected manoeuvre by USA-179 has not yet occurred. Controllers seem to be keeping its Mean Motion at a high value. Maybe this is connected with phasing the orbit with USA-198 (launced 2007 Dec 10). The whole of the past six weeks has been a departure from the normal routine by USA-179. See: http://www.zarya.info/Tracking/USA179/USA1792008H1.php It may worth referring back to the previous six months for a comparison: http://www.zarya.info/Tracking/USA179/USA1792007H2.php USA-198 shows no sign of being operational as yet. The payload continues to rotate with a period of around 160s. There are day-to-day, and possibly hour-hour variations. The magnitude variation resulting from the rotation has been seen in both visual and radio observations. Bob Christy Lincoln, UK 53.2233 deg North 0.6004 deg West Height 59m No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.6/1230 - Release Date: 17/01/2008 16:59 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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