RE: NC-2 second ISS-rendezvous rocket firing

From: Ted Molczan (seesat@rogers.com)
Date: Wed Jul 27 2005 - 08:53:40 EDT

  • Next message: Eric Briggs: "Daytime Shuttle/ISS"

    John asked:
    
    > Can anyone tell me how noticeable this burn will be as far as 
    > ground track is concerned ?......and if the TLEs incorporating the burn 
    > are yet available ?
    
    Elsets covering all orbital phases of the mission are available via this web
    page (hit the red icon):
    
    http://spaceflight1.nasa.gov/realdata/elements/index.html
    
    At the moment, that page appears to be the same one posted pre-launch, but based
    on past behaviour, it is likely to be updated at least several times during the
    mission, so when you need precise predictions, check for updates as late as
    possible before you observe.
    
    The table at the top of the page lists all remaining planned manoeuvres. See the
    column IMPULSIVE TIG, for their date and time. The rightmost column lists the
    apogee and perigee height (HA, HP) in nautical miles, by which you can easily
    tell whether the effect of the manoeuvre will be large or small (at least for
    those that are mostly in-plane).
    
    State vectors in Cartesian and TLE form are presented for each manoeuvre on the
    remainder of the page. They are presented for "Coasting arcs" which cover the
    period between successive orbital manoeuvres. For example, on the pre-launch
    page, the first manoeuvre time in the table was on day 207/15:17:08.227 GMT (aka
    UTC). Scanning through the page, I find a match in 
    "Coasting Arc #2 ...", which states a Vector Time (GMT): 2005/207/15:17:41.987
    shortly after the manoeuvre.
    
    It would be nice if the table of manoeuvres included a reference or a link to
    the corresponding coasting arc #. Perhaps I will send in a suggestion.
    
    Perhaps someone could write a script to link to the page and extract a subset of
    the data, containing, say, only the starting and ending time of each coasting
    arc, and the corresponding TLE, something like what I did manually pre-launch:
    
    http://satobs.org/seesat/Jul-2005/0224.html
    
    Ted Molczan
    
    
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive:  
    http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Jul 27 2005 - 09:33:08 EDT