While waiting for new TLEs of the s/c, I have been taking a closer look at the two that indicate an orbit change. Interestingly, both nearly intersect with the pre-orbit change TLE at about the time of a pass within range of Baikonur, on Nov 10 from ~20:16 to 20:23 UTC. Probably, this will turn out to be a meaningless coincidence, but it does seem interesting in view of efforts to communicate with the s/c from that site, so I am putting this out with the caveat that I have been burned lots of times by spurious TLEs and various coincidences that later proved meaningless. Subsequent TLEs could make this all go poof! Below are the circumstances of the pass. I don't know the coordinates of the telemetry transmitter, so for now, I used those of the Zenit pad used for the launch: UTC 20:15:54 rose above 0 deg elevation 20:16:17 reached 2 deg 20:19:36 culminated at ~30 deg 20:23:06 set below 2 deg 20:23:31 set below 0 deg Closest approach between pre-orbit change TLE and first post-change TLE is ~20:15:52 UTC. Relative the second post-change TLE, it is ~20:13:36 UTC. Due to the low delta-V, these times are not well-defined, and uncertainty is at least several minutes. If there was a single impulse at the point of intersection, then delta-V was 1.3 to 1.6 m/s (4 to 5 fps). Ted Molczan _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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