With yet another two decayers, #10362 (Cosmos 955) and #14693 (Palapa B2 rocket), I have updated my Decay Watch page with analyses of seven decayers - too much data to report here. The one final report is... #12547 = 81- 58 A = Cosmos 1278 Final decay estimates: SpaceCom: Sep 2 03:04 +-14m 39.8 S 33.1 W SatEvo: Sep 2 02:58 +-15m 32.2 S 38.9 W Final elsets: Cosmos 1278 641 x 86 km 1 12547U 81058A 00246.02326346 .99999999 91324-6 15458-2 0 2927 2 12547 62.7294 148.3467 0411275 201.4795 157.4004 15.68339039142456 Cosmos 1278 382 x 84 km 1 12547U 81058A 00246.08608394 .99999999 54480-5 12422-2 0 2939 2 12547 62.7295 148.1770 0225157 208.6685 149.7226 16.15124381142467 This decayed one orbit later than I expected, probably over the SW Atlantic to the SE of Rio De Janeiro after passing over Brazil. The final elset has it only 29 sec early against my final prediction but my suspicion that it would decay on the previous orbit proved wrong. However, I think that this might have been self luminous as it met (and evidently survived) very high drag forces as it swept southbound through its very low perigee between Brazil and Africa on that rev; the drag (ndot2) terms on the two final orbits were probably closer to 3 and 6 rather than the 0.99etc quoted above. Alan -- Alan Pickup / COSPAR 2707: 55d53m48.7s N 3d11m51.2s W 156m asl Edinburgh / SatEvo & elsets: http://www.wingar.demon.co.uk/satevo/ Scotland / Decay Watch: http://www.wingar.demon.co.uk/satevo/dkwatch/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Sep 02 2000 - 06:56:15 PDT