USA 224 rediscovered by Kevin Fetter

From: Ted Molczan via Seesat-l <seesat-l_at_satobs.org>
Date: Sun, 2 Jul 2017 11:13:32 -0400
Kevin Fetter's UNID of 2017 July 02 UTC correlates with USA 224 (11002A / 37348), which is the primary satellite in the
KeyHole eastern plane.

The following search TLEs span the known range of mean motion:

USA 224                                                  259 X 969 km
1 99991U          17183.19664847  .00016313  00000-0  15000-3 0    08
2 99991  97.9000 294.9222 0508000 171.7419 189.2574 14.84000000    00

USA 224                                                 259 X 1000 km
1 99992U          17183.19662768  .00015949  00000-0  15000-3 0    03
2 99992  97.9000 294.9227 0529400 167.2780 194.2421 14.78999999    08

USA 224                                                 259 X 1039 km
1 99993U          17183.19660555  .00015519  00000-0  15000-3 0    09
2 99993  97.9000 294.9237 0555000 162.6429 199.4630 14.72999999    07

I assumed that the perigee height had not changed since the summer of 2016, when the object was last observed. In each
solution, I fixed inclination, eccentricity, mean motion and rate of decay, all of which are guesses.

The solutions with lowest mean motion yielded the lowest residuals.

Ted Molczan


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Received on Sun Jul 02 2017 - 10:14:39 UTC

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