01040A launch: Elements and observations

From: Ted Molczan (molczan@home.com)
Date: Thu Sep 13 2001 - 18:45:09 EDT


I derived the following using observations by myself, Tony Beresford, Russell
Eberst, Paul Gabriel, Bjoern Gimle, Jim Nix and others, made during 2001 Sep
09 - 13 UTC:

USA 160 r       10.1  3.0  0.0  3.0 v
1 26906U 01040B   01256.37639468  .00000000  00000-0  00000-0 0    01
2 26906  63.4685 286.2661 0149629 187.9740 171.9323 13.43452628    09

Mean residuals are about 0.02 deg.

On 2001 Sep 12 UTC, I observed the Centaur and two objects trailing it:

26906 01 040B   2701 E 20010912025807750 17 25 0248554+581477 28 S
26906 01 040B   2701 E 20010912025829940 17 25 0315800+570844 67 S
75101 01 040C   2701 E 20010912030424250 17 25 0348418+563122 48 S
75102 01 040D   2701 E 20010912030440790 17 25 0348779+564557 48 S
75102 01 040D   2701 E 20010912045137770 17 25 1635087+510482 28 S
75102 01 040D   2701 E 20010912045223060 17 25 1602672+590262 18 S

Site 2701: 43.68764 N, 79.39243 W, 230 m

At 03:04 UTC, 75102 trailed 75101 by 16.54 s, and was consistently fainter, by
perhaps 1 magnitude.

At 04:51 UTC, I could not see 75101, but 75102 was easily seen. So it appears
that the brightness of both objects can vary considerably.

At 04:51 UTC, the Centaur appeared to vary regularly in brightness, with a
period of perhaps 10 s. I did not make any precise measurements of it on that
pass.

I observed both payloads briefly on 2001 Sep 13 at 02:17 UTC. The separation
between them had grown to 21.34 s.

Ted Molczan

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