USA 129 made a small manoeuvre early on 2001 May 08. This was its pre-manoeuvre orbit: USA 129 15.0 3.0 0.0 5.1 v 1 24680U 96072A 01128.07600694 .00027884 00000-0 36783-3 0 00 2 24680 97.8412 190.9426 0478081 1.4651 358.7960 14.83700612 09 Observations late on 2000 May 08 and early May 09 by Daniel Deak, Russell Eberst and Rainer Kracht indicated that a small manoeuvre had occurred earlier in the day. (I assume that their obs will be posted to SeeSat-L, so I will not include them here.) It appears that the maneouvre occurred at about 04:15 UTC, when the object was at apogee. That would make it a perigee-raising manoeuvre. The following estimated elements, stated for the time of maneouvre, are in reasonable agreement with the post-manoeuvre observations: 1 24680U 96072A 01128.17684606 .00026014 00000-0 36783-3 0 00 2 24680 97.8412 191.0421 0475000 1.1341 177.4000 14.82982447 05 I suspect that yesterday's small manoeuvre was preliminary to the expected larger apogee re-boost, which may already have taken place as of this writing. I recommend that observers be prepared tonight for a significantly late arrival and large deviation from the track predicted by the above elements. 95066A had not manoeuvred as of my observation on 2001 May 09 at 06:46 UTC: 23728 95 066A 2701 B 20010509064605100 17 25 1118500+313800 68 S I received a single point from Daniel Deak, observed on the previous rev. Here are updated elements: 1 23728U 95066A 01129.27251736 .00022684 00000-0 49483-3 0 00 2 23728 97.9120 241.8031 0434855 210.2130 147.3314 14.82063296 03 If the major re-boost manoeuvres do not occur at this opportunity, then I expect them to occur at the next opportunity, on or about 2001 May 18. 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 : Wed May 09 2001 - 10:34:41 PDT