Russell Eberst has reported the first new observations in 8 days; the object was about 30 s late relative the 8 day old elements, implying a lower recent rate of decay. To update the elements, I propagated the Jan 22 elements to Jan 30, using Alan Pickup's Satevo v0.51 program, then corrected only rate of decay, mean anomaly and mean motion to fit across the Jan 22-30 arc: USA 193 5.0 2.5 0.0 4.3 v 1 29651U 06057A 08030.26831198 .00084342 00000-0 15698-3 0 06 2 29651 58.4892 124.4395 0007499 96.9889 263.2062 16.00418844 04 Arc 2008 Jan 22.28 - 30.29, WRMS residuals = 0.069 deg The cross-track portion of the residuals range between near zero and 0.04 deg. The mean rate of decay during this arc was about 21 percent less than during the previous arc; short-term variations of 25 percent or more are normal. Using Satevo v0.51 with a 10.7 cm solar flux of 71, results in a decay prediction for April 13. This is quite a bit later than my prediction based on the Jan 22 elements, but the predictions will bounce around quite a bit, until we are closer to decay. Ted Molczan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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