USSTRATCOM's latest orbital elements of UARS (91063B / 21701) propagate to decay late Sep 23 or early Sep 24 UTC. I performed the propagations using Alan Pickup's Satevo 0.51, with 10.7 cm solar flux set to the recent value of 140. The results are summarized below. Elset Epoch Decay Date (UTC) 11261.954400 11266.647916 2011 Sep 23 15:33 11262.448275 11266.765961 2011 Sep 23 18:23 11262.509972 11267.051855 2011 Sep 24 01:15 11262.509981 11266.605512 2011 Sep 23 14:32 11263.188338 11267.283823 2011 Sep 24 06:48 11263.558017 11266.825615 2011 Sep 23 19:48 The estimates are derived from the six most recent TLEs, issued over the past 40 hours, which propagate to decay as early as Sep 23 14:32 UTC and as late as Sep 24 06:48 UTC. That is consistent with the rough rule of thumb that the uncertainty in the predicted length of time until decay is about 20 percent. Ted Molczan _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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