Ivan Luís wrote: > I received people's messages that saw a satellite reentering > in Brazil on the state of São Paulo (04:33 UTC - 01:33 GMT -3). > A person told me that recorded the same. I'm awaiting for the > video. In the report the same said that were several traces and > that went if disintegrating, of color orange reddened. > > He sighted the trails to the North, starting from the constellation > of Aquila (about 45 degrees height), passing a little below > Altair, between Delphinus and Sagitta, going ties Cygnus, for about > 30 degrees, when the trails disappeared. The 30 degrees were > traveled in about 10 to 20 seconds. The episode happened at > 1:33 (GMT-3) o'clock. > > A person that saw sent the following location of the observation > > "22 47 62 S" > "47 04 23 W" The description that you provided is consistent with a satellite decay, and I agree that the upper stage of the rocket that launched Progress M-60, 07017B / 31394, is an excellent candidate object. The confirming elements are not available at this time, due to an apparent problem with the Space Track service. As I write, the site has not received updated data since 2007 May 14 at 20:00:51 UTC - about 29 hours ago. I ran a couple of the available epoch day 07134 elsets through the Satevo decay propagator, one of which resulted in a decay within a minute or so of the observation you have shared with us. A decay near that time would have followed very nearly the described sky track. Due to the low altitude of a decay, the exact sky track is very sensitive to the time of passage. The final USSTRATCOM elset, when it arrives at Space Track, should be definitive. Ted Molczan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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