Re: TLE for GPS III SV03 (Columbus)

From: Marco Langbroek via Seesat-l <seesat-l_at_satobs.org>
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2020 18:34:09 +0200
On 20/06/30 17:09, Richard Cole via Seesat-l wrote:
> There is an article on Spaceflightnow.com that says:
> 
>> Mission planners also changed the perigee of the spacecraft’s initial
>> orbit after launch from around 740 miles [for SV01] to 250 miles [for
>> SV03], according to Col. Edward Byrne, senior materiel leader at SMC’s
>> Medium Earth Orbit space systems division.
> 
> Elsewhere it is clear this is the transfer orbit that is being referred
> to. Therefore, the initial injection orbit has a much lower apogee than
> on SV01 (which have have put it at 1300km altitude at the second stage
> reignition at T+62mins). This will make it lower and much brighter on
> the first orbit pass over Europe.

Here is a TLE estimate for an assumed 200 x 400 km initial coasting orbit:

GPS III SV03             launch 2020-06-30 19:55:00 UT   200 x 400 km
1 70000U 20999A   20182.82986111  .00000000  00000-0  00000-0 0    08
2 70000 055.0000 116.8043 0149742 045.0627 327.7197 15.90815658    07

Sighting opportunities in SE Europe. For NW Europe the sky probably is
still too bright (and weather bad).

- Marco



----
Dr Marco Langbroek
Leiden, the Netherlands

e-mail:   marco_at_langbroek.org
web:      http://www.langbroek.org
twitter:  _at_Marco_Langbroek
----
_______________________________________________
Seesat-l mailing list
http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
Received on Tue Jun 30 2020 - 11:34:46 UTC

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Tue Jun 30 2020 - 16:34:46 UTC