Re-entry of 73084D / 6939: sightings from SE USA

From: Ted Molczan via Seesat-l <seesat-l_at_satobs.org>
Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2015 12:00:51 -0400
As Jonathan McDowell reported earlier, the re-entry of 1973-084D / 6939 was seen from the southeastern U.S.A. on 2015
Jun 29 near 05:30 UTC (01:30 EDT). It was the Blok-L stage of the Cosmos 606 launch. Empty mass 1160 kg.

Satevo propagates the final three USSTRATCOM TLEs to decay within several minutes of the reported sighting times. Satevo
depends on the ndot/2 decay term, which has been truncated at 1.0 rev/d in those TLEs. I estimated the actual much
higher values from the B* decay term.

The American Meteor Society has nearly 130 sighting reports. I have confirmed sightings from at least 8 states: Florida,
Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina, West Virginia.

http://www.amsmeteors.org/members/imo_view/event/2015/1420

Half a dozen delayed sonic booms have been reported. The following two locations were almost directly beneath the
re-entry trajectory. Most of the others were in the same general area (within about 1 deg of latitude).

Lavonia, GA (34.53 N, 83.1 W)

http://www.amsmeteors.org/members/imo_view/report?report_id=68607

Clemson, SC (34.67 N, 82.8 W)

http://www.amsmeteors.org/members/imo_view/report?report_id=68556

There are a few videos on You Tube; none spectacular.

I have added this re-entry to the table of sightings that I maintain:

http://satobs.org/reentry/Visually_Observed_Natural_Re-entries_latest_draft.pdf

Ted Molczan


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Received on Mon Jun 29 2015 - 11:02:02 UTC

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