Lacrosse 5 and USA 129 elements

From: Ted Molczan (molczan@rogers.com)
Date: Fri May 06 2005 - 11:13:04 EDT

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    Lacrosse 5's orbit has evolved toward the 0.0004 eccentricity, typical of that
    program. There appears to have been a small manoeuvre between these two element
    sets:
    
    Lacrosse 5       0.0  0.0  0.0  3.4 v
    1 28646U 05016A   05124.94857913  .00000042  00000-0  10000-4 0    00
    2 28646  57.0067 113.8751 0009805 170.5030 189.6171 14.53359643    03
    Arc 2005 May 04.08 - 04.97, WRMS residuals = 0.025 deg
    
    1 28646U 05016A   05126.25551177  .00000042  00000-0  10000-4 0    09
    2 28646  57.0043 108.9989 0004323 145.9536 214.1755 14.53348341    07
    Arc 2005 May 05.10 - 06.28, WRMS residuals = 0.032 deg
    
    An interesting feature of the Lacrosse orbits is that they appear to be frozen,
    such that eccentricity and argument of perigee are maintained in a narrow range.
    In the case of the 57 deg Lacrosse orbits, argument of perigee remains in the
    vicinity of 90 deg; the 68 deg remain near 270 deg.
    
    There are many references to frozen orbits on the web, in case anyone would like
    to research the topic.
    
    Here is an updated version of my earlier USA 129 elset; this one is based solely
    on Russell Eberst's and my observations:
    
    USA 129         15.0  3.0  0.0  5.3 v
    1 24680U 96072A   05126.11472855  .00009302  00000-0  12627-3 0    09
    2 24680  97.9716 189.9751 0526258 295.3194  59.4392 14.72962807    00
    Arc 2005 May 05.92 - 06.13, WRMS residuals = 0.018 deg
    
    Ted Molczan
    
    
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