Re: #25047 DECAY ALERT FOR U.S.

Alan Pickup (alan@wingar.demon.co.uk)
Sat, 15 Nov 1997 08:48:07 +0000

In message <l03110702b092eb39f0c8@[142.58.124.48]>, Leigh Palmer
<palmer@sfu.ca> writes
>A satellite just reentered over Vancouver, and I think some pieces
>actually fell here in Burnaby! We saw debris falling from the sky
>at 9:11 PST. Could someone please check that time for #25047 and
>verify it? Could there be an exact three hour error in it? If so,
>I'd like to know as soon as possible. BCTV is waiting for news. If
>this is the satellite, what sort is it? "Kupon Platform" doesn't
>mean much to me.
>
>All information is welcome.
>
>It was quite spectacular! More details later.

Yes - I think this was the re-entry of #25047 !

The latest OIG elsets for this are:
Kupon Platform?                                  142 x 134 km
1 25047U 97070C   97319.08131641  .15065432  12750-4  14910-3 0   202
2 25047  51.6192 303.0607 0006103 301.4540  58.6236 16.50650228   397
Kupon Platform?                                  139 x 124 km
1 25047U 97070C   97319.14177011  .15418202  12931-4  98767-4 0   212
2 25047  51.6306 302.7054 0011413 329.7985  30.1827 16.53074858   407

These show it running 22 and 33 seconds ahead of my decay prediction of
a few hours ago.

My latest analysis, completed _before_ I heard of the Vancouver
sighting, suggested that there could have been one further equator
crossing:
Kupon Platform?                                  119 x 118 km
1 25047U 97070C   97319.20217523  .69601697  75634+1  24027-3 0 90236
2 25047  51.6222 302.3467 0001141 273.5094  86.4776 16.57978356   410
with decay on that rev at about 05:29 UTC.

The latlong program (Mike McCants) gives the following ground track:

    Height   UTC     Latitude  Longitude
      km     h  m      deg N    deg W
     100     5  7       45.7    134.9
      99     5  8       47.6    129.7
      99     5  9       49.1    124.1
      98     5 10       50.3    118.2
      97     5 11       51.2    112.0
      97     5 12       51.7    105.6
      96     5 13       51.8     99.2
      96     5 14       51.5     92.7
      95     5 15       50.9     86.3
      94     5 16       49.9     80.2
      94     5 17       48.6     74.4
      93     5 18       46.9     68.9
      93     5 19       45.0     63.8
      93     5 20       42.9     59.1
      93     5 21       40.6     54.7
      92     5 22       38.1     50.6

Note that the heights are too high if it was indeed re-entering.

As to what the object is, I don't know - can Vladimir or anyone else
enlighten us ? Whatever it was, it appeared to be quite massive for its
cross-sectional area so that it lost altitude at a relatively slow rate.
That made its decay prediction all the more difficult.

Alan
-- 
 Alan Pickup | COSPAR site 2707:   55d53m48.7s N   3d11m51.2s W    156m asl
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