RE: Sputnik40 TLEs

Jeff Hunt (jhunt@radix.net)
Wed, 5 Nov 97 15:47:46

Hello All, 

Only speculation on my part, but why would the international designation for 
Progress M-36 (97058) be applied to Sputnik 40? I realize it was delivered 
on M-36, but why not a Mir international designation since it was launched 
from Mir during the EVA 3?

24958/97058C is presently leading the Mir complex by 5356 km. Radio 
observations of Sputnik 40 indicate it only slightly leading Mir.

Could 24958/97058C be debris from M-36?

Jeff Hunt <jhunt@radix.net>


--- On Wed, 5 Nov 1997 18:39:18 +0300 (MSK)  Agapov Vladimir 
<avm@kiam1.rssi.ru> wrote:

>Hello,
>
>Sputnik-40 was released at ~04:05 UTC on Nov 3. 
>It seems that U.S. SpaceCom have tracking Sputnik-40. OIG database
>has following TLEs for it (#24958 was not used before):
>
>
>1 24958U 97058C   97307.76974987  .03133272  00000-0  33373-1 0    15
>2 24958  51.6653 104.2151 0002854 267.1153  91.4740 15.60116254    11