Lacrosse 2 orbit change

Allen Thomson (thomsona@netcom.com)
Tue, 29 Jul 1997 09:01:11 -0700

   Mike McCants said:

>A couple of weeks ago Ed and I noticed that Lacrosse 2 had made
>a change in its mean motion and was running 30 seconds early.

>Ian Porter has now made a couple of observations and I have awakened
>from my slumber and come up with a "guess" than the new mean motion
>is about 0.000800 greater than the previous value.


   The obvious speculation would be that this adjustment is in connection 
with the anticipated launch of Lacrosse 3 once the USAF gets the N2O4
leak on the T-IV fixed.  Can our resident orbitologists (yes, you, Ted :) )
give us a reading on what might be going on?