Hello all, A question has come up on the Minor Planet Mailing List about the possibility of tracking hardware from the Falcon Heavy launch, especially bits going into heliocentric orbit. Problem is, we don't actually know where to look. We're really more "rock" oriented than "artificial object" oriented, so I thought I'd ask opinions on this list (as I've done before a few times.) I made a few comments on MPML about this launch : https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/MPML/conversations/messages/33819 For various reasons, we like to get at least a few images of any bits and bobs that our species sends into heliocentric orbit. We've sometimes seen unexpected parts fall off (there were some pieces that we think were ice chunks that came off of the Planck/Herschel mission and some unidentified debris from ExoMars, for example). We also would like to be able to identify objects should they come back to our neighborhood, which has happened a few times. We've been able to ID a few such objects, such as the SIV-B stage from Apollo 12 that was temporarily captured in 2003. But such identifications are a lot easier if we know what's been launched and in what direction it was last seen to be going. So... does anyone have a source of predicted ephemerides for the pieces of this launch that will enter heliocentric orbit? And if you get observations, I will definitely be all ears! Thank you, -- Bill _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Mon Feb 05 2018 - 21:19:36 UTC
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