Re: Decay watch: Telstar 401 Centaur r

Alan Pickup (alan@wingar.demon.co.uk)
Tue, 15 Dec 1998 23:14:00 +0000

OIG's current decay notice for this, issued almost 24 hours ago at 03:08
on December 15 indicates decay on December 16 at 17:29 UTC. As Harro has
mentioned, we have been treated to at least one elset with an
erroneously high drag, but it is also clear that this is decaying more
quickly than the predictions I made yesterday.

We are overdue for another elset, the last published one being:

Telstar 401 Centaur r                            1452 x 117 km
1 22928U 93077B   98349.54750047  .25051465 -89684-5  10865-2 0  3540
2 22928  23.5104  13.3130 0931789 356.9696 172.8911 14.32219214 66192

This shows it 4.6 *minutes* early against the prediction I posted
yesterday.

It is hard to compute a SatEvo evolution that satisfies the elsets over
the past day. The following truncated prediction, based on only the
latest elset, leads to decay at December 17.7 but (given the spread of
recent elsets) it could indeed decay as early as the 16th:

Telstar 401 Centaur r                            1269 x 117 km
1 22928U 93077B   98350.06716516  .28746594  29346-1  11435-2 0 93546
2 22928  23.5045  10.0269 0814753   2.7115 357.7047 14.60041129 66278
Telstar 401 Centaur r                            1082 x 117 km
1 22928U 93077B   98350.54102752  .34112869  48895-1  12309-2 0 93540
2 22928  23.4991   6.9020 0691153   8.1717 352.8988 14.89610253 66340

Alan
-- 
 Alan Pickup | COSPAR 2707:   55d53m48.7s N   3d11m51.2s W   156m asl
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