Re(2): USA 129, USA 116 and USA 86
Bjoern Gimle (b_gimle@algonet.se)
Sat, 18 Apr 1998 20:29:03 +0200
I wrote:
>
>I found USA 129 again today Apr.11 at 19:50:14.7 UT RA 07:15 Dec.+17.5 (1950)
>...
>This time I did not see a flare in the S, but in the NW, at about
>19:49:00 UT, around mag. 0
>
Pierre Neirinck saw the contradiction in these statements, assumed a two
minute error in the time, and computed an orbit with a good fit to my
observations, and Russell's on Apr.15. I checked my 100-lap memory stopwatch
and found I had made a mental arithmetic error on the minutes.
Small differences from Pierre's elset are because on my backup 386 I
do not have my fax software to receive Pierre's data, and Vec2Tle
instead of Orbitel to compute checksums.
I can't run Cola here to estimate the time of maneuvre, but with the
98089 elset from Molczan.tle, SkyMap and trial-and-error I found that
these two elsets differ by only a few seconds on the SB pass over
western USA on April 02 at 18:15 UT, with a perigee kick probable
30 minutes later.
USA 129 small adjustment Apr.02 18:45??
1 24680U 96072 A 98107.95605925 .00027220 00000-0 24872-3 0 57
2 24680 97.8216 168.6511 0513577 33.0321 330.1891 14.82899771 4165
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