I awoke to find several updated USSTRATCOM TLEs at Space Track, which Satevo propagates to decay on Sep 24 between about 02:00 and 04:00 UTC, indicating a significant trend toward a later decay. For now, it looks like 00:00 - 04:00 UTC, but it could well happen even later. UARS will pass over North America and Europe several times during this period, but it will spend most of its time over oceans and sparsely populated land. I hope to have more information on ground tracks later today. I have updated the plots I posted yesterday to include the new predictions. The first plot shows the past two weeks. Two weeks ago, it appeared that the decay would occur during Sep 29 - Oct 01 UTC, but the increased drag associated with high geomagnetic activity during Sep 9-13, advanced the decay by about one week. http://satobs.org/seesat_ref/misc/UARS_decay_predictions_v6a.pdf The second version focuses in on the past four days, during which the predicted decay has ranged between Sep 23, 14 h and Sep 24, 07 h UTC. http://satobs.org/seesat_ref/misc/UARS_decay_predictions_v6b.pdf Ted Molczan _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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