I have received an observation report from a SeeSat-L subscriber of a third object in apparent formation with the NOSS 3-3 payloads on 2005 Mar 12 near. The report was intended for the list, but did not make it through for technical reasons. Hopefully, it will be successfully reposted. Probably the object in question will turn out unrelated to NOSS 3-3 - perhaps debris from an earlier NOSS launch - but just in case, I have created a search orbit that roughly agrees with the observation. 1 70000U 05034.38791129 .00000011 00000-0 20000-4 0 00 2 70000 63.4329 162.1832 0130000 182.0206 178.0382 13.42489000 02 The above epoch is near the first ascending node of 05004A after launch on 2005 Feb 03 UTC. The mean motion is that required for a nearby related object to have lapped the known payloads by last night. The plane of the above orbit precesses slightly faster than that of the payloads, which puts it nearly 0.3 deg west of them today, in rough agreement with the observations. The above mean motion is similar to that of the Centaur near that epoch, so perhaps it is Centaur debris. Here is a relevant search orbit: 1 70001U 05036.17575053 .00000018 00000-0 30000-4 0 04 2 70001 63.8260 157.9889 0139000 179.7198 180.3928 13.42508500 06 The plane of this one is now well east of the NOSS, but it is in rough agreement with the observation. The 70000 orbit seems the better match of the two. I believe it would be worth making a brief planar search within 5 or 10 minutes of the above orbits. Ted Molczan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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