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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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