This morning, I was able to spot the smoke trail of the 1st stage of the Pegasus rocket carrying the TSX-5 satellite into orbit. As expected, the sight was not nearly as spectacular as a night launch, but I'll take it for what it's worth! First sighting was 6:20:20am PDT, about 30 seconds before the end of the 1st stage burn, as the rocket climbed steeply in the southwestern sky. The "flame" was bright orange and somewhat elongated - quite easy to see in 7x50 binoculars from my +100 mile range. The smoke trail was quite evident even without optical aid. As the flame disappeared, a few seconds later I was able to see a "puff" of smoke as the stages separated. The second stage "flame" became visible in the binocs, but very much fainter than the 1st stage and whiter in color. I lost the trail about 6:21:40, well before predicted 2nd stage burnout. The sky was very clear and blue, about 35 minutes after local sunrise. For once I simply enjoyed the view and did not take any photos or videos. According to the SPACEFLIGHTNOW website, vehicle drop from the L-1011 aircraft occurred at 6:19:30am PDT, about 12 minutes after the originally published "nominal" drop time. First stage ignition occurred 5 seconds later at 6:19:35. First stage burnout reportedly occurred at 6:20:53 with a short vehicle coast until 2nd stage ignition at 6:21:15. Second stage burnout was at 6:22:15. See the entire summary of the launch at: http://spaceflightnow.com/pegasus/tsx5/status.html RICK BALDRIDGE N37.272 W121.977 Campbell, CA 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 : Wed Jun 07 2000 - 09:15:08 PDT