Recent obs of USA 102 (23031, 94-017B) have stirred up some curiosity about it. Two or three nights it displayed tumbling Iridium-like very bright flashes, the next night I couldn't find it. The next night it was very easy, tumbling, in binoculars (admittedly found by cheating -- looking over Mike McCants' telescope!); last night I couldn't find it! 94-017 B 01-07-23 03:13:30.8 EC 112.4 0.3 18 6.25 USA 102, called Darpasat and TAOS, "Technology for Autonomous Operational Survivability" -- described as "GPS receiver and data processor technology tests"; information on this page, including artist's rendering: http://samadhi.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/QuickLooks/taosQL.html Says it was 3-axis stabilized, so clearly "broken" now. Design life was only one year. Two pages with bibliography: http://gauss.gge.unb.ca/grads/sunil/missions.htm#darpasat http://www.friends-partners.org/mwade/craft/darpasat.htm Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 26 2001 - 01:48:43 PDT