The apparent relationship between Rick Baldridge's unknown and Milstar 4 looks interesting. Adjusting the ILAM information (Initial Launch Alert Message) for Milstar 4's actual time of launch, it should have separated from the Centaur on 2001 Feb 28 at 03:54:49 UTC, and entered this orbit: 1 70003U 01059.16306713 .00000000 00000-0 00000-0 0 05 2 70003 4.5010 345.6470 0000480 326.3210 165.2540 1.00342419 07 Mike McCants' latest elset for Rick's unknown is: > Unknown 010313 > 1 90009U 01572A 01074.70789176 0.00000000 00000-0 +00000+0 0 02 > 2 90009 2.9000 327.5003 0001000 0.0523 359.9743 1.00263524 05 As a crude check for a possible relationship, I ran an ephemeris for my location (43.68764 N, 79.39243 W, 230 m)for the time of spacecraft separation, and found pretty close agreement. Their predicted azimuths would have been nearly identical, but the elevation of the unknown would have been roughly 2 deg lower than that of Milstar 4. Ted Molczan ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Sat Mar 17 2001 - 09:14:11 PST