An Atlas V 401 is scheduled to launch Landsat 9 from Vandenberg AFB at 18:12UTC today into a 666x679 km sun synchronous orbit. A few cubesats will also be released afterwards in a slightly different orbit. The mission overview (https://ulalaunch.com/docs/default-source/launch-booklets/mobrochure_landsat9_final1.pdf) places the Landsat 9 separation over Belarus at 1h20m40.4s after launch, which would correspond to 19:32:40.4UTC for an on time launch. The final 25 second de-orbit burn over the UK starts at 2h57m44.1s after launch, corresponding to 21:09:44.1UTC. Both these events happen at most one or two minutes before shadow exit and hence may be visible from Northern Europe. Here is a very rough guess for the Landsat 9 deployment orbit: 1 85001U 21270.75833333 .00000000 00000-0 50000-4 0 03 2 85001 98.2200 336.0000 0009077 0.0000 115.0000 14.66327431 06 Note that the cubesats may be deployed in a lower orbit, so the de-orbit burn may be early with respect to this TLE. Regards, Cees _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Mon Sep 27 2021 - 04:37:38 UTC
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