More USA 129 elements; manoeuvre alert continues.

From: Ted Molczan (molczan@home.com)
Date: Sat Apr 15 2000 - 09:14:27 PDT

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    Pierre Neirinck produced these elements, using observations by himself, Russell
    Eberst, Ted Molczan, Alberto Rango and Rainer Kracht, from 10 - 15 April UTC:
    
    USA 129         15.0  3.0  0.0  5.1 v
    1 24680U 96072A   00106.38875050  .00045957  00000-0  62437-3 0  4357
    2 24680  97.8705 170.3117 0473539 182.8324 176.6474 14.84078029    05
    
    Using only the observations from 12 - 15 April UTC, I obtained:
    
    1 24680U 96072A   00106.11909144  .00035368  00000-0  50708-3 0    01
    2 24680  97.8745 170.0603 0468669 185.3864 174.2195 14.84030945    00
    
    For practical purposes (predicting tonight's passes), both elsets are equally
    reliable. Both have mean residuals of about 1 arc min.
    
    The differences in decay rate and mean motion most likely are due to
    differences in atmospheric drag between the data sets used for the differential
    correction. Drag has been declining in recent days, so my elset, which is based
    on a later data set, would be expected to have a lower decay rate.
    
    Ted Molczan
    
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