Here are my transcripts of Mir (86017A / 16609) and Soyuz T-15 (86022A / 16643) 2-line elements, as requested by Igor Lissov, to fill a gap in the official archives at Space Track: http://satobs.org/seesat_ref/misc/16609.TLE http://satobs.org/seesat_ref/misc/16643.TLE Igor, in your message you recalled that Mir and Salyut 7 had been held nearly coplanar in the late spring of 1986, to enable the Soyuz T-15 cosmonauts to travel between the two stations. That brought back some memories. In June of 1986, I was planning to visit Winnipeg on business, which is at about 50 N - close to the northern apex of the orbits of Mir and Salyut 7, which happenned to be well positioned to observe several passes each night. I decided to run predictions for them, so that I could see several consecutive high elevation passes, something that cannot be done from my home latitude, near 44 N. One night, I set my hotel alarm to wake me just before each pass, and each time I hastily dressed and headed to a dark corner of the parking lot to observe. I recall seeing more than one spacecraft, but I no longer recall the specific ones. One of them may have been Progress 26, after it undocked. It was not the best thing to do sleep wise, but fun. To top things off, while reading the paper at breakfast on my final day in Winnipeg, I spotted a report from Russia, announcing that the Mir crew, which a couple months earlier had undocked from Mir and then rendezvoused and docked with Salyut 7, were leaving Salyut 7 to return to Mir that day. Announcing such operations in advance had been a very recent and exciting development, a result of Gorbachev's policy of glasnost. I knew that it could be an opportunity to see the Soyuz in close proximity to either Mir or Salyut 7. I managed to get home from the airport just in time to drop my suitcase and invite a neighbour to join me on the roof of my apartment building to observe. We spotted Mir first, rising in the west (June 26, 02:56 UTC). Several minutes later, we spotted Salyut 7 in the west, and as it became better illuminated we easily spotted the Soyuz leading Salyut 7 by something like 10 s in time. Ted Molczan _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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