The latest elset for Iridium 5, via Alan Pickup's site, shows Iridium 5 back on station: Iridium 5 4.0 1.8 0.0 6.0 d 14 780 x 776 km 1 24795U 97020D 01233.22151996 -.00000148 00000-0 -59883-4 0 6820 2 24795 86.4007 213.6395 0002511 89.2625 270.8862 14.34217701224971 This is in excellent agreement with the last preconfusion elset: Iridium 5 4.0 1.8 0.0 6.0 d 14 780 x 776 km 1 24795U 97020D 01222.54695557 .00000196 00000-0 62816-4 0 6763 2 24795 86.3970 218.0950 0002575 70.9299 289.2181 14.34218720223439 but this is to be expected, as the position of operational Iridium satellites is tightly contained. As far as I can see, Iridium 5 could not possibly have manouvered from the low orbit in elset IRIDIUM 5 1 24795U 97020D 01229.96916872 +.00000219 +00000-0 +59118-4 0 06826 2 24795 086.4488 214.9303 0004886 069.4490 290.7336 14.43145200224504 to its current operational position. So the constellation is complete once more, but this still leaves open the question of whether Iridium 5 remained on station all the time and was merely temporarily confused with Iridium 51, or whether Iridium 51 in fact replaced Iridium 5 on August 11. Anyway, OIG is now showing Iridium 5 and Iridium 51 as separate objects once again! -- Rod Sladen, Beeston, Nottinghamshire, UK 52.9230N, 1.2190W ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Aug 21 2001 - 04:44:59 PDT