Good morning Ive just read the press release on the failure of DSP 23. Maybe I am too much of a stikler for accuracy but, to the best of my knowledge, there are one or two inaccuracies in the report as follows: "several amateur astronomers had reported that DSP 23, the last of the U.S. missile-warning satellites built by Northrop, and launched in November 2007, had stopped transmitting in mid-September." " some amateur astronomers, who use optical and radio telescopes to track objects in space, suggested the DSP satellite may have been adrift in geosynchronous orbit, which could pose a danger to other satellites operating in that orbit." As far as I am aware I was the first and only one to identify that DSP F23 was not transmitting - see SeeSat report "Optical-some-15 November 2008" where I stated that I had received no signals a few days earlier - the date of the radio observation was actually 06 November 2008, so I would dearly like to know who the "several amateur astronomers had reported that DSP 23 had stopped transmitting in mid-September" are so that I can make contact with them so that the amateur radio network that tracks classified satellites can be expanded. As far as I know I am the only amateur observer that has optical AND radio capability for tracking geostationary objects. DSP F23 cannot be seen or heard from CONUS so any observations would have had to come from further east - ie Africa, Europe, UK etc and it cannot be seen or heard from Australasia etc. To the best of my knowledge there are only TWO amateur optical observers in this region - Peter Wakelin in the UK and myself in South Africa that observe geostationary objects and Peter does not have the radio equipment for the frequencies required. All the amateur observations of this object were made by Peter and myself, and as pointed out in my previous posting the orbital elements for this satellite showed that it started drifting in mid-September 2008. If I am incorrect in any of what I have written above I would WELCOME correction as I TRULY would like to make CONTACT with the "several" and "some" amateurs that had reported no signals from DSP F23. Now back to measuring last nights observations :-)) Cheers Greg ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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