Tony Beresford wrote:
> The current orbit of usa 129 is very nearly 15 revs/day,
> and I have had 2 passes each evening at close to the
> same alt-az on successive days. I dont recall this happening
> in previous years since launch.
It was about one month from exact 15:1 resonance (which would have occurred when mean motion reached ~15.00907 rev/d)
when you and Greg Roberts observed it in November 2011:
289 X 843 km
1 24680U 96072A 11319.79117576 .00024500 00000-0 33505-3 0 05
2 24680 97.6865 9.0108 0399173 36.4459 323.5539 14.99376827 00
Greg recovered it at the end of December, by which time it had raised its perigee:
311 X 835 km
1 24680U 96072A 11364.78318417 .00010000 00000-0 18802-3 0 04
2 24680 97.6865 53.5714 0376658 243.9399 116.0600 14.97086013 05
I estimate that the reboost occurred near Dec 15, about the time it would have reached 15:1 resonance.
Ted Molczan
_______________________________________________
Seesat-l mailing list
http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Feb 14 2012 - 03:15:19 UTC