The launch time has been announced: 2005 Apr 30 at 00:50 UTC - quite a bit earlier than I had guessed. The result will be evening and morning visibility for much of the N. Hemisphere (all night north of the mid-latitudes). Unfortunately, the S. hemisphere will have a marginal evening visibility window, for the Lacrosse orbits only. The early launch should result in illumination of much of the ascent, so (time permitting) I will cobble together some trajectory information for the benefit of folks along the east coast of N. America. Here are elements for the 00:50 UTC lift-off: Lacrosse type 1 425 X 671 km 1 71001U 05120.03790510 .00001267 00000-0 60000-4 0 01 2 71001 57.0000 131.4521 0177200 0.0000 33.0000 15.06000000 05 Lacrosse type 2 570 X 675 km 1 71001U 05120.03790510 .00000506 00000-0 60000-4 0 06 2 71001 57.0000 131.4521 0075000 0.0000 33.7000 14.82000000 00 USA 144 type 204 X 307 km 1 71002U 05120.03790510 .00690749 00000-0 60000-3 0 00 2 71002 63.3898 136.2521 0077500 65.0000 327.3000 16.06300000 00 SDS 2 type 285 X 305 km 1 71003U 05120.09400741 .00051582 00000-0 14107-3 0 04 2 71003 54.9966 128.7412 0014868 298.6913 61.2643 15.92552889 08 Ted Molczan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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