Iridium radar cross-sections update

Ed Cannon (ecannon@mail.utexas.edu)
Sun, 12 Jul 1998 14:18:56 -0400

For whatever reasons, USSPACECOM's radar cross-sections for 
the 72 Iridiums in orbit are all over the place, but my guess 
is that really they're all the same size and shape.  So I 
calculated their average RCS using the values in the latest 
quicksat.mag file, and the result was 10.9 square meters.

Mike has also updated the notes about the status of the various
Iridiums; it's included with his TLE file for them (which he's
still been updating daily, as long as the scripts are working):

   http://www.fc.net/~mikem/iridium.html
   http://www.fc.net/~mikem/ftp/iridium.zip
   ftp://ftp.fc.net/pub/users/mikem/iridium.zip

Ed Cannon -- ecannon@mail.utexas.edu -- Austin, Texas, USA