On Fri, 11 May 2001, Harro Zimmer wrote: > 1985-105A (#16235) Cosmos 1701 > OIG showed today (UTC) the decay of Cosmos 1701. SPACECOM hasn't issued any > TIP message. There are five peculiar ELSET'S for these three days: > May 05 Mean Motion: 6.344... Eccentricity: 0.4762... > May 07 " " 7.213... " 0.4217... > May 10 " " 15.829... !! " 0.0371... !! > I don't see a "normal" explanation for this big jump between May 07 and > May 10. It looks like a "catastrophic" event. > The perigee altitude on the last epoch time - 1130.5628... - was 80.60 km. > Based on the last two ELSET'S MPM + REENTRY delivers the decay on > 10 May, 13:54 UTC +/- 17 minutes (28.11°S, 353.90°E) > on a descending pass over the South Atlantic. It is also possible that the > satellite survived for another rev. OIG reported:" Decayed 2001/05/11" It is possible that the differing element sets might relate to different objects because Cosmos 1701 suffered a break-up on April 29th. It is interesting that NASA has been "spotting" the break-ups of satellites decaying from Molniya-type orbits over the last year or so. It seems likely that the satellites do suffer break-ups routinely during the final stages of orbital decay as aerodynamic forces cause attachments like solar panels and instrument shields to fragment during the low perigee passes. Phillip Clark --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Phillip S Clark 22 Winterbourne Close Molniya Space Consultancy Hastings Compiler/Publisher, Worldwide Satellite Launches E Sussex TN34 1XG U.K. Specialist in "space archeology" - the older and more obscure the more interesting it is ! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 : Fri May 11 2001 - 13:35:22 PDT