Patrick Schmeer asked: > > Are there any other bright satellites in > > sun-synchronous orbits that are missing? Helios 2B (09073A / 36124) remains to be found, but that is only a matter of time. > Or, more generally asked, which missing/lost > classified satellites may be still in orbit > (LEO in particular)? A small number of LEO objects are missing or lost, mainly because they are faint. Marco Langbroek pointed out that Misty 2 (99028A / 25744) may still be in orbit. Even Misty 1 (90019B / 20516) could still be in orbit. Those are intentionally faint, and have been (mostly) successful at eluding our detection. We lost track of Geosat FO (98007A / 25157) and XSS-11 (05011A / 28636) after they manoeuvred into long-term disposal orbits (lowered perigee). They are not extremely faint, and we have sufficient data to construct reasonable search orbits, so I suspect they could be found with some effort. Eventually, they will be spotted as UNIDs. (When UNIDs are reported, we check for consistency with the plane of missing/lost objects.) A couple of small, faint, ferrets launched with KH-9 satellites, 80052C / 11852 and 83060C / 14139, have not been seen since 2007. A couple of NOSS plume shields that served as payloads, are in orbit. They are known as LIPS (Living Plume Shield). Lips 2 (83008B / 13792) has not been reported since the late 1980's. Lips 3 (87043B/ 17998) was observed during 1999-2000. They are faint. To my knowledge, hobbyists have never (knowingly) observed the three small payloads of the 90031A / 20560 launch; the rocket body was observed during 1999-2001. Those are the ones that come to mind immediately. Ted Molczan _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Aug 26 2010 - 21:28:58 UTC