Re: TLEs for ASTRA 1F

Mike McCants (mikem@fc.net)
Fri, 21 Nov 1997 10:50:31 -0600 (CST)

Bruno wrote:

>I wonder anyway how USSPACECOM measure positions of satellites which are
>not visible from the US or any US possession.

There are several references to GEODSS if you search yahoo.

Here are two:

http://www.spacecom.af.mil/usspace/geodss.htm

http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/track/geodss.htm

The site at Diego Garcia is responsible for getting confused and
tracking the wrong object for the last few months. (IMO)
(It's a Brittish territory.)

We had a former GEODSS operator tell us a little about it when
he found us using my 16-inch to track a few objects at a recent
"dark sky" star party.  He said the computer points the telescope
at the predicted place and they manually control the center
of the CCD display from the object to a nearby star and back
again about 3 or 4 times.  When the target object or star is
centered, they push a button to tell the computer to save the
current position.

After getting a few positions on one object, they go to the
next object.

Mike