Brian Weeden wrote: > In an article at Space.com on Friday night ( > http://www.space.com/14312-russia-mars-probe-phobos-grunt-conspiracy-theories.html > )STRATCOM > said the following: > > "All actions taken during the Phobos-Grunt re-entry were designed to > improve international data sharing on this event," Julie Ziegenhorn, Deputy > Chief of Public Affairs at U.S. Strategic Command, said in an email > statement. "Unfortunately, shortly after the re-entry event, there was > human error that led to all Phobos-Grunt entries on spacetrack.org being > misfiled into the year 2011 data, which made it difficult for customers to > access the information. Shortly after the error was discovered, the > information was re-posted to the site and is accessible at this time." > > I still do not see Phobos-Grunt listed on the TIP page - does anyone else? A short time ago, I logged on to Space Track using two different web browsers, and found no mention of Phobos-Grunt on either of the two pages which contain links to TIP messages: "Recent Satellite Decays" and "Current Decay Predictions (From TIP Messages)". The last standard TIP message I saw was issued on Jan 10 at 21:20 UTC. It disappeared a few hours, and was replaced by a series of non-standard reports that provided only the estimated earliest and latest time of decay, which were issued during Jan 12-15. Those subsequently also disappeared. The satellite catalogue does state the date of decay. USSTRATCOM did its usual excellent job of tracking the spacecraft and publishing frequently updated precise orbital elements, which enabled independent professional and amateur analysts to make their own decay estimates. Roscosmos also provided useful information as the decay neared, in the form of daily estimates roughly similar in content to standard USSTRATCOM TIP messages. ESA issued a few updates on the decay, but was not nearly as informative as USSTRATCOM and Roscosmos. I am not aware of any reason to believe that this particular decay posed an unusual risk to human life or property. There have been no reports of injury or damage since the decay. Therefore, it seems odd that a final definitive estimate of the time and impact or debris footprint has not been forthcoming. Ted Molczan _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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