At 21:01 23/03/01 , John locker wrote: >I ask , because a weather sat image for 0600 Indian Ocean appears to show a >trail , well south of the anticipated >re-entry path. > >The trail travels south of India , north of Australia and out towards the >Pacific. > >Watching live coverage from the Russian Control Centre it seems the final >burn was more aggressive than anticipated , perhaps bringing the path >further south. John, your hypotheses doesn't make sense. The TOTAL velocity change imparted by the rockets on MIR/Progress was of the order of 45 meters/second. If things were more efficent they mean it was the last was maybe at the outside 30 rather than the planned 25 meters/second. Since MIR had an orbital velocity of 8000 meters/second, even if all this was applied sideaweays (which of course it wasnt) it might have changed the inclination by 180/800 degrees or about 1/5of a degree. Since the fuel supply was used to exhaustion , no bigger velocity change is possible. Hardly enough to change a trajectory over the Ukraine Khazakstan ->China and Japan to one south of India. Your hypothesis also fails to alllow for the NW to SE trajectory over Fijii. I think the trace you saw in the metsat image was associated with the intertopical convergence zone or something similar. Tony Beresford ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 Mar 23 2001 - 03:03:11 PST