Here are updated search elements, based on observations on 2012 Sep 14, by Bram Dorreman near 03:54 UTC, and Kevin Fetter near 09:43 UTC. For the payload, I adjusted the epoch, RAAN and mean anomaly of my search elements to fit Kevin's observations of the trailing object. Residuals are small. NROL-36 1 79601U 12048A 12258.39443996 .00000000 00000-0 00000-0 0 06 2 79601 63.4386 40.5161 0127783 180.8400 179.2429 13.39314612 08 Mean motion remains a guess. Allow at least one minute prediction time uncertainty per 24 h from epoch. For the Centaur, I adjusted my search elements to fit different combinations and weightings of Bram and Kevin's observations. Here are a couple of my results: NOSS 3-6 r 489 X 745 km 1 79602U 12048B 12258.35461294 .00000000 00000-0 00000-0 0 04 2 79602 64.3579 38.9166 0183150 290.8120 67.3451 14.83426335 08 Arc 20120914.16-0914.36 WRMS resid 0.082 totl 0.081 xtrk NOSS 3-6 r 271 X 965 km 1 79602U 12048B 12258.35465942 .00009242 00000-0 10000-3 0 09 2 79602 62.8166 37.1792 0496524 304.4012 51.1066 14.83238794 06 Arc 20120914.16-0914.36 WRMS resid 0.116 totl 0.115 xtrk The mean motion is fairly accurate, so the uncertainty will be mainly in the track. I suggest using both of the above to help bracket searches. The international designations are subject to change, once we see what the official ones are. Ted Molczan _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Sep 14 2012 - 15:59:39 UTC