USSTRATCOM has catalogued the payload of NROL-35 as USA 259 (2014-081A / 40344). The Centaur has yet to appear in the catalogue, and may never be listed, given the intention to de-orbit it on its first revolution. Peter Wakelin has posted his first visual observations of the payload, spanning more than 7 h: http://satobs.org/seesat/Dec-2014/0095.html Off-list, Scott Tilley has shared for review, five observations he made near 2014 Dec 14 01:45 UTC, that fall within the span of Peter's observations. My analysis of the combined set of observations yields the following solution: USA 259 2101 X 37750 km 1 40344U 14081A 14348.24158565 .00000000 00000-0 00000-0 0 08 2 40344 62.8507 212.7154 6776416 266.7209 69.0062 2.03510246 02 Arc 20141213.94-1214.24 WRMS resid 0.005 totl 0.004 xtrk Both data sets had small residuals, so there is reason to be confident in both. I will leave it to Scott to post his observations to the list. Ted Molczan _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Sun Dec 14 2014 - 10:42:31 UTC
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