The launch window opens on 2010 Apr 21 at 22:44 UTC and closes on Apr 22 at 01:08 UTC. I believe that the intended orbital inclination is approximately 28.5 deg. My guess is that the altitude will be about 300 km, but I have produced search elements spanning 220 km to 600 km. Generating ephemerides for each elset, and plotting them on a star chart, will facilitate searching. The elsets are based on shuttle elements found in Jonathan McDowell's archive, and rotated to the circumstances of the upcoming launch. For example, the first elset below is based on STS 33, specifically the second elset listed here: http://www.planet4589.org/space/elements/20900/S20935 The elements are based on launch at the start of the window. The final three digits of the pseudo-catalogue number denote the altitude in kilometres. 1 99220U 10111.98450060 .00528860 00000-0 25599-3 0 03 2 99220 28.4678 22.5526 0006234 264.2180 21.9681 16.19915601 05 1 99300U 10111.97660882 .00001250 00000-0 39176-5 0 03 2 99300 28.4661 21.2106 0003454 327.2178 272.6926 15.90144682 02 1 99360U 10111.97743067 .00033373 00000-0 25300-3 0 09 2 99360 28.4689 22.5573 0004564 300.2120 301.7026 15.71112740 05 1 99430U 10111.99875188 .00009181 00000-0 18000-3 0 08 2 99430 28.4660 22.4687 0005932 276.7259 83.2674 15.46187004 05 1 99480U 10111.97963507 .00008404 00000-0 27078-3 0 06 2 99480 28.5234 20.5415 0005383 270.7227 343.6624 15.31069911 03 1 99560U 10111.97988541 .00000064 00000-0 45874-5 0 00 2 99560 28.4672 21.1953 0006068 37.3881 216.6091 15.03465913 03 1 99600U 10111.93298538 .00000154 00000-0 00000-0 0 08 2 99600 28.4530 21.3920 0022633 59.2926 301.0352 14.90080047 01 I will follow-up in the next few days with a discussion of visibility windows, and the effects of launching later in the window. I will also estimate X-37B's standard visual magnitude. Ted Molczan _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Apr 18 2010 - 06:05:07 UTC