The eighth launch of Japan's IGS (Information Gathering Satellite) program is scheduled for launch from Tanegashima on an H-IIA rocket, on 2013 Jan 27 between 04:05 and 06:33 UTC. The consensus on the web appears to be that IGS 8's payload consists of two satellites: IGS Radar 4 and a demonstrator of the next generation optical payload. This launch targets the plane of IGS Optical 4 (11050A / 37813). Launching near 04:37 UTC would precisely match the RAAN of 11050A, based on its last known elements. Japanese contributors to NSF cited a Mr. K. Shibata as having reported, "H-IIA F22 is 202 configuration with 4/4D-LC fairing. 1st deploy the IGS radar-4 and 2nd deploy the IGS Optical-5 demo satellite", and that the actual launch window is from 04:40 to 04:53 UTC. http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=30241.15 Based on our tracking of IGS Radar 4, and launch at 04:40 UTC, I offer the following approximate search elements: IGS Radar 4 508 X 513 km 1 79215U 13027.23872042 .00000000 00000-0 00000-0 0 08 2 79215 97.5207 150.3279 0003529 53.6978 306.4581 15.17600117 06 IGS Radar 4 rocket 471 X 509 km 1 79216U 13027.23888793 .00006889 00000-0 28000-3 0 03 2 79216 97.4180 150.3945 0027593 48.5636 311.7965 15.24232445 05 I do not know the intended altitude of the new optical satellite. The earliest optical satellites orbited at about the same ~500 km altitude of the radar satellites, but Optical 3 and 4 adopted a ~74 km higher orbit. The orbit is visible from the mid-southern hemisphere, but passes occur well after local midnight, and enter eclipse soon after rising, at low elevation. Northern hemisphere visibility occurs around the summer solstice. Ted Molczan _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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