As a subscriber to this list for less than a day, but as someone who has had an interest (though mainly casual and intermittent) in satellite tracking since Sputnik 2 (!), may I join in please? The decay predictions by Mike McCants have inspired me to dust the cobwebs from some decay prediction software I wrote almost 17 years ago. The software (SATEVO) seems to have done reasonably well in predicting the FSW-1 orbit over recent days but will probably fail miserably now that I'm tempted to publish some of its output. Ah well, nothing ventured... --------------------------------------------------------------------- Original orbit (from Mike's last post) FSW-1 1 22870U 93063H 96069.55879199 .02744120 11308-4 11505-3 0 5126 2 22870 56.4144 27.3788 0131027 76.9255 284.6304 16.19120968117681 SATEVO predictions (with arbitrary element number and invalid checksums) FSW-1 1 22870U 93063H 96070.05222605 .03029998 00000-0 00000-0 0 95120 2 22870 56.4135 24.9607 0120027 78.0840 283.2590 16.21963247117760 FSW-1 1 22870U 93063H 96071.03627178 .04011735 00000-0 00000-0 0 95120 2 22870 56.4114 20.1060 0094336 80.4105 280.6547 16.28763905117920 FSW-1 1 22870U 93063H 96071.58776967 .05186765 00000-0 00000-0 0 95120 2 22870 56.4099 17.3621 0076242 81.7257 279.1388 16.33760394118010 FSW-1 1 22870U 93063H 96072.01538041 .07206693 00000-0 00000-0 0 95120 2 22870 56.4083 15.2191 0058479 82.7530 277.9115 16.38933322118080 Decay of FSW-1 is predicted for March 12 at about 15h UT. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Original orbit TSS 1 23805U 96012B 96068.20445684 .00483381 00000-0 25009-2 0 488 2 23805 28.4693 181.9269 0053170 310.5325 49.0741 15.76653960 2266 My predictions (with arbitrary element number and invalid checksums) TSS 1 23805U 96012B 96069.46981923 .00516466 00000-0 00000-0 0 90480 2 23805 28.4691 172.6717 0051259 325.6083 34.0610 15.77918171 2460 TSS 1 23805U 96012B 96070.03889995 .00532931 00000-0 00000-0 0 90480 2 23805 28.4689 168.5036 0050377 332.3978 27.3356 15.78515261 2550 TSS 1 23805U 96012B 96071.05005383 .00565048 00000-0 00000-0 0 90480 2 23805 28.4687 161.0882 0048769 344.4768 15.3742 15.79624831 2710 TSS 1 23805U 96012B 96072.06047416 .00601433 00000-0 00000-0 0 90480 2 23805 28.4685 153.6657 0047107 356.5675 3.4003 15.80802674 2870 TSS 1 23805U 96012B 96073.00703566 .00640241 00000-0 00000-0 0 90480 2 23805 28.4683 146.7002 0045496 7.9138 352.1560 15.81977200 3020 TSS 1 23805U 96012B 96074.01589661 .00687790 00000-0 00000-0 0 90480 2 23805 28.4680 139.2625 0043713 20.0292 340.1409 15.83315809 3180 Decay of TSS is predicted for March 26 Alan -- Alan Pickup | Home lat. 55d53m48.7s N Edinburgh | long. 3d11m51.2s W Scotland | alan@wingar.demon.co.uk | +44 (0)131 477 9144