I'm wondering what the visibility of the ICO satellites will be. The first one is to be launched Sunday (one of three launches on the same day UTC). The information available is that they will be in 10,390 km (circular?), 45-degree inclination orbits with six-hour orbital period. The payloads are HS601, like a lot of geostationary communications satellites, including Orion 3 (which of course didn't make it to the planned orbit). From the detailed information on the launch, it appears that there will be a two-minute engine burn (stage 3, burn 2, or MES 2) beginning over northeast Egypt or the north end of the Red Sea at about 16:46:19 UTC on March 12; I believe that would be in darkness. Perhaps that burn might be visible at least from Egypt, Israel, and Jordan if not farther away. Several hours later the page lists "Stage 3 transfer to disposal orbit complete". They have a timeline, an illustration of the launch phases, and a map of the launch track and events. This is a very informative Web site regarding a launch! References: Sea Launch: http://www.sea-launch.com/special/sea-launch/current_launch.htm ICO F-1 http://www.ico.com/press/indexlaunch.htm HS601: http://www.friends-partners.org/~mwade/craft/hs601.htm Ed Cannon - ecannon@mail.utexas.edu - Austin, Texas, USA ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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
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