I recently posted that there had been no orbital adjustments made to Iridium 51 for a long time, in contrast to the other spare Iridium satellites. Howver, an elset emerged from OIG yesterday showing a negative drag, suggesting an orbital adjustment. IRIDIUM 51 1 25262U 98018A 01025.54945517 -.00000729 00000-0 -22420-3 0 3796 2 25262 86.4523 300.3305 0003376 91.5118 268.6363 14.42959152149409 The previous elset was: IRIDIUM 51 1 25262U 98018A 01024.30119710 .00001190 00000-0 34985-3 0 3786 2 25262 86.4427 300.8451 0004156 52.4757 307.6822 14.42982712149223 I wonder if this signifies that Iridium Satellite LLC or Boeing are checking that it is still controllable. This would seem to indicate that Iridium 51 is definitely regarded as a spare, in which case Iridium 2, Iridium 69 and Iridium 73 are, by elimination, confirmed as failed. -- Rod Sladen, Beeston, Nottinghamshire, UK, 52.923N, 1.219W ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jan 26 2001 - 06:48:46 PST