Jonathan McDowell wrote: > Ted - a correction: as far as I can tell, on the two immediately previous > Dragon missions the second stage has been actively deorbited on the first > rev. > If D is the second stage, this is the first time since CRS-2 that it has > remained in orbit - I wonder whether that was intended, or reflects a > deorbit burn failure? > > > The Falcon stage typically re-enters about a week later > > I concur that the decay rate of the objects compared with that of CRS-2 > supports your interpretation that D is the second stage. Thank you. I should have qualified my information. Regarding the possibility that it had been intended to de-orbit the second stage, I found no evidence of a NOTAM having been issued. That may not be conclusive, because I could not find one for the Dragon CRS-4 launch, for which the second stage was not catalogued, presumably because it had been de-orbited. I did find a de-orbit NOTAM for CRS-3. There were sightings of the CRS-5 mission's second stage, tumbling and venting fuel, producing the classic spiral phenomenon. This was on 2015 Jan 10, near 13:01 UTC (03h14m after launch), from northern Midwest U.S. /southern mid-Canada. A bright object was reported trailing not far behind on the same trajectory, which I assume to have been the payload. Ted Molczan _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Sun Jan 18 2015 - 11:37:24 UTC
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