Last night I sighted ERBS (Earth Radiation Budget Satellite), a sat deployed by Space Shuttle Challenger on STS-41G! ERBS was orbited Oct 5, 1984. Astronaut Sally Ride (known as the first American woman in space) had to shake the satellite with the remote manipulator arm to open its solar array. Amazing to see a satellite, deployed by a shuttle which itself doesn't exist anymore. This was a SSW-ENE pass / 64° SE culm. Mag: 3.3. Was not prepared for telescopic observation, but wait on a higher pass for possible capture of detail. Was actually prepared to capture a pass of USA-161 KH sat, passing around the same time,(and same mag) but the sat was not found. I did capture Kosmos 1674 (a Tselina) however. I captured a Kosmos 3 rocket body as well in the same night (launch vehicle of German X-ray astronomy ABRIXAS sat from 1999. ABRIXAS turned out to be a failed mission; After 3 days in orbit a battery charged the main battery of the sat in error and destroyed it. Ralf Vandebergh http://ralfvandebergh.startje.be/vieuw.php?qid=303316 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/private/seesat-l/attachments/20100522/4da6db21/attachment.html _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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