Re: alldat.tle w/ Skymap - FIXED!
Ralph McConahy (rmcconahy@earthlink.net)
Fri, 11 Jun 1999 17:44:41 -0700
Quinn McCleery wrote:
>
>As somewhat of a side note, the sat I had been attempting to identify WAS
>identified positively. It was NORAD# 23488U, Designator 94085M. There was
>no other identification, like many of the sats in alldat.tle Does anyone
>know of a way I could figure out what this really is, just out of
curiosity?
Quinn,
23488 (94-85M) is a piece of debris from a Russian SL-19 rocket booster that
was launched 12/26/94. By the large number of debris pieces (25 in all) it
appears that there was a problem (explosion?) with the launch vehicle once
in orbit. On another note, the radar cross section of this object is only
0.47 m^2 which begs the question if that is what you truly saw or was it
something else?
To answer you question about a way you can figure out what a given object
is, go to the web page:
ftp://tie.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/dransom/sat.sit.report/ssr99/
and download the latest zip file.
Ralph McConahy
34.8829N 117.0064W 670m