Re: Midas 9

From: Tristan Cools (tristan.cools@skynet.be)
Date: Sat Sep 22 2001 - 04:00:12 EDT

  • Next message: Allen Thomson: "Re: Midas 9"

    At 00:59 22/09/01 -0400, you wrote:
    
    >	During 1998 I saw Midas 7. These are unusually high sats (over 2,000 miles)
    >to see 1 power. Noting how old these sats are I do not think they are
    >working, but are rather tumbling dead sats. Is it common to see the Midas
    >sats or is it just a chance when you see one? Or maybe no one has went after
    >these birds. I guess I am wondering if they can be seen as reliably as some
    >of the tumbling Iridiums.
    >
    >Floyd Weaver
    >Lebanon PA USA
    
    Hello Floyd,
    
    The Midas satellites don't work anymore.  These satellites were one of the
    first satellites designed for Early Warning purposes.  They are in fact
    Agena rockets with a payload attached to them but nobody has ever seen a
    picture of it(I think).  After all these years the looks of these
    satellites remain classified.
    
    The Midas satellites have always been part of the Belgian Working Group
    Satellites(BWGS) observation program and we have a large archive of
    observations.
    
    61- 18 A d     163/Midas 3: long period
    61- 28 A d     192/Midas 4: sometimes triple flashes
    62- 10 A -     271/Midas 5, Steady
    63- 14 A d     574/Midas 6, still flashing
    63- 30 A d     622/Midas 7, long period
    
    The complete observation program which is constantly updated can be found at:
    
    http://users.skynet.be/satimage/bwgs/program.rob
    
    The PPAS flash database(more than 50000 observations) can be found at:
    
    http://users.skynet.be/satimage/bwgs/ppas9drf.zip
    
    Weekly updates to this file are here:
    
    http://users.skynet.be/satimage/bwgs/ppasdrft.obs
    
    
    Greetings,
    
    
    Tristan Cools tristan.cools@skynet.be
    Belgian Working Group Satellites(BWGS) webmaster
    
    Ryckevelde:  3.2856E/51.2045N - OBS place 2
    Brugge:      3.2166E/51.2104N - OBS place 3(home)
    
    Homepage at http://users.skynet.be/satimage/index.htm
    BWGS homepage at http://users.skynet.be/satimage/bwgs/bwgs.htm
    
    
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