Greg Roberts wrote: > (1) Not a night I normally track but after receiving a possible > circular orbit from Mike McCants for my unknown of 18th November > I decided to give it a go and observed it running about 2 minutes > early on the possible orbit so this looks like an UNKNOWN that has > not escaped further observation so we should now be able to get a > good orbit. I have called the object 03 322A in the data above - dont > know if this is the correct way of naming an unknown. I guess that my > excitement at discovering a "new" satellite will be burst in a few > days time when it is finally linked to a known tracked object as > its too bright to have escaped detection if it was a real unknown. I noticed Wednesday that the object's orbital plane was very near one inhabited by Earth resources and environmental satellites, such as Spot, Adeos and ERS, so I suspected it was one of those, having made a manoeuvre subsequent to the most recent elset in the Sunday alldat file. I tried to guess which one manoeuvred, on the assumption that it must have been one of those still active. I downloaded fresh elsets for several recent Spots, nut none had manoeuvred. I resolved to send you and Mike an e-mail stating my hunch, and to re-check the object's identity when I received the Thursday alldat file. Alas, I forgot to do both. Your message this morning reminded me, so I quickly re-ran your original observation through IDSat, against the Thursday alldat, and as suspected, it was a Spot that manoeuvred, but I would not have believed that it was the ancient Spot 1! SPOT 1 1 16613U 86019A 03323.76430856 -.00000043 +00000-0 +32694-6 0 08954 2 16613 098.6658 035.3665 0009346 257.9074 102.1039 14.24176673605148 SPOT 1 1 16613U 86019A 03322.85098448 -.00003242 +00000-0 -13888-2 0 08922 2 16613 098.6662 034.4649 0009171 260.8768 099.1366 14.24172250605015 03822A 1 99991U 03322.85099471 .00000000 00000-0 00000-0 0 03 2 99991 98.4000 34.7723 0001000 301.4233 58.5766 14.25000000 02 SPOT 1 1 16613U 86019A 03321.86741171 -.00000937 +00000-0 -38759-3 0 08888 2 16613 098.6595 033.4998 0007919 270.0833 089.9558 14.24167655604876 SPOT 1 1 16613U 86019A 03320.81137000 +.00000618 +00000-0 +31030-3 0 08847 2 16613 098.6671 032.4583 0001140 048.8826 311.2451 14.20074003604720 SPOT 1 1 16613U 86019A 03319.82494909 +.00000722 +00000-0 +35915-3 0 08808 2 16613 098.6663 031.4894 0001356 043.3352 316.7925 14.20073192604586 SPOT 1 1 16613U 86019A 03316.72476443 +.00000160 +00000-0 +95577-4 0 08703 2 16613 098.6699 028.4535 0001368 052.7692 307.3604 14.20071248604149 Since it manoeuvred from the standard 14.2 rev/d Spot orbit to a lower one, I suspect it is finally being removed from service. Had I been better organized, I might have saved you some search time. Still, it was not entirely a wasted effort, since it serves as a test and demonstration of your ability to recover unknowns. And with your additional tracking, it would have been easy to determine which object manoeuvred, even without an alldat update. > Please accept my apologies for the shambles with my SeeSat > postings over the past two days - I have not yet had a chance > to see where the problem is taking place with my messages to > SeeSat being returned to me but still appearing on SeeSat -- > I am beginning to suspect its my server who continually seems > to mess up my mail with its anti-spam system --- so far all > it seems to have done is reject my mail and let the spam through! No need to apologise. I strongly suspect that the ISP of one of our subscribers has installed some overly aggressive anti-spam software that cannot differentiate between a mailing list and spam. What is unusual, is that the bounced messages are not only being sent to me, the SeeSat-L admin, but to those who posted the bounced message. I am working to resolve the issue. Ted Molczan ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from SeeSat-L, send a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@satobs.org List archived at http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Nov 21 2003 - 05:33:17 EST