George Olshevsky wrote: > The shroud was a single piece, unlike all shrouds nowadays, > which are in two (or more) pieces. A two-piece shroud may be > jettisoned laterally as soon as the launch vehicle leaves the > atmosphere while it is still firing, relieving it of dead > weight. But a single-piece "nose cone" has to remain attached > to the launch vehicle until orbital injection, at which time > it is blown off and becomes a separate piece of orbiting > debris in a slightly higher orbit than the satellite it > protected. The Sputnik 1 nose cone was not catalogued by > Space Track, but early issues of "Space Log" list it as an > orbited object from that launch. Being light in weight and > having a relatively large surface area, it probably decayed > within a few weeks after the launch. It would have been the > second-brightest object from the launch, being considerably > larger than the satellite itself. SAO Special Report 10, issued in March 1958, lists 8 nose cone (1957 Alpha 3) observations during 1957 Oct 15-24 UTC, made by 6 observers on as many passes. One observation is denoted as doubtful. The introduction states, "... a3 [Alpha 3] are observations that do not lie on the a2 [Alpha 2, which is the Sputnik satellite] curve but instead seem to form an orbit of their own. Possibly those "a3" observations are of the nose cone of the carrier rocket." Ted Molczan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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