RE: Crazy Iridium TLEs
Jeff Hunt (jhunt@eagle1.eaglenet.com)
Tue, 2 Sep 97 16:22:05
By "morning" I guess you refer to Iridium numbers 22-26/24907-24903.
Yes, they have made significant orbital adustments (~60km) to a higher
orbital altitude looking at the epochs from Aug 29 to Sept 2 for their final
altitude of ~780km.
Yes, the M2 terms reflect those adjustments (IMO).
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Jeff Hunt, Charlotte Hall, Md. USA 38.51N,76.76W <jhunt@eagle1.eaglenet.com>
Visual Satellite Observer Home Page found at
http://www.satellite.eu.org/satintro.html
Intro to observing sats@ftp://ftp.satellite.eu.org/pub/sat/info/satintro.zip
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--- On Tue, 2 Sep 1997 14:40:39 -0400 (EDT) Edward S Light
<light@argoscomp.com> wrote:
>What's going on with the "morning" Iridium orbital elements?
>In examining the TLEs for these "newer" Iridia, I see wild values of M2
(the
>acceleration term in the mean motion), whereas the older "evening" objects
>have no such strangeness. Are the newer ones adjusting their orbits? Are
>the ridiculous M2 terms just an artifact of such maneuvers and the method
>by which OIG calculates M2?