All obs on Milsat & its centaur

Tony Beresford (starman@camtech.net.au)
Mon, 24 May 1999 23:59:27 +0930 

Here are all the observations on what I believe to be the Milstar3
payload and its Centaur. It includes more observations  received by mail
today  from Ron Welch of canberra. 
I report them in IOD format. The station number 8167 has been assigned jointly
by Pierre Neirinck & Russell Eberst. Its co-ordinates are:-
latitude -35.242, long 149.1576E, 570m asl
I have taken the liberty of identifying the second and third observations
as the payload on the basis that the optical characteristics are different, it may be the centaur; Ron says he lost object and when it was reacquired it wasnt flashing.
Ron states is flashing of 99 23B at about 1/second. Which means ed Cannon's observation were of the Centaur. I have put in the catalog numbers and internatiol ID courtesy OIG.

25725 99 023B   8167 F 19990514105301600 27 25 0921200-153060 68 R
25724 99 023A   8167 F 19990514110113800 27 24 1135800-123600 68 S
25724 99 023A   8167 F 19990514110321100 27 25 1224300-102640 68 S
25725 99 023B   8167 F 19990517105152800 27 25 0951700-145000 68 S
25725 99 023B   8167 F 19990517105436100 27 25 1031200-132800 68 S
25725 99 023B   8167 F 19990517105748200 27 25 1124650-104600 68
Here are Ron's earlier observations corrected to station ID and proper numbers

25725 99 023B   8167 F 19990510100555900 27 25 0942300-145400 68 S              
25725 99 023B   8167 F 19990510100856400 27 25 1036510-161700 68 S              
25725 99 023B   8167 F 19990510101140400 27 25 1134280-155900 68 S              
25725 99 023B   8167 F 19990510101612000 18 25 1321200-130240 68 E              
25725 99 023B   8167 F 19990511105149300 27 25 0827480-121620 68                
25725 99 023B   8167 F 19990511105604200 27 24 0914800-142000 68                
25725 99 023B   8167 F 19990511105927000 27 25 1008640-153500 68                
25725 99 023B   8167 F 19990511110134000 27 25 1047600-153840 68    

My own observations. I think I observed the payload on May 19
in my first observation. And the observations didnt fit an orbit
which did fit my later ones and Ron's

25724 99 023A   8597 F 19990519095952800 17 25 1055800-162200 48 I+055 05       
25724 99 023A   8597 F 19990519100048100 17 25 1127200-122100 48 I+060 05       
99010 99 023B   8597 F 19990519123103700 17 25 0940020-103860 28 I+065 05       
99010 99 023B   8597 F 19990519123215500 17 25 0953370-095420 28 I+060 05 
Lastly my obs of may 21

25724 99 023A   8597 P 19990521114743600 17 25 1219000+001500 48 S+055 05

Notes for analysts. The terminal orbit noted in the press for the payload
has an eccentricity of .213 and a mean motion of 9.371, while
the intially anounced orbit ( presumably not much different for both
has a higher eccentricity say 0.25 and bigger mean motion of 9.668 or so.