Congratulations to Russell Eberst for reporting the first visual observations of XSS-11 (05011A / 28636). XSS-11 was in close proximity to its Minotaur booster rocket's upper stage, which is in the following orbit: XSS-11 r 1.3 1.1 0.0 7.6 v 1 28637U 05011B 05313.20554038 .00000036 00000-0 20000-4 0 00 2 28637 98.8610 303.8192 0015637 323.1159 36.8936 14.11048001 07 Arc 2005 Oct 29.24 - Nov 09.23, WRMS residuals = 0.014 deg On 2005 Nov 07 near 05:50 UTC, Russell observed XSS-11 "about 20 arcmins ahead" of the rocket: http://satobs.org/seesat/Nov-2005/0066.html At the time, slant range was about 1072 km, so 20 arc min was equivalent to about 6 km separation, along-track. On 2005 Nov 09 near 05:30 UTC, Russell observed XSS-11 0.04 s (time) ahead of the rocket: http://satobs.org/seesat/Nov-2005/0098.html Angular velocity at the time was near 0.36 deg/s, so the 0.04 s time separation was equivalent to 0.0144 deg. Slant range was about 1134 km, so separation was about 300 m, along-track. That is quite close, so apparently, Russell observed a rendezvous in progress. Russell's observed magnitude of 8.2 on Nov 9, suggests XSS-11's standard mag is about 7.3 (1000 km, 90 deg phase angle). The two objects can be readily distinguished because XSS-11 is stable, and its rocket stage is rotating, resulting in about a 10 s period of variation of brightness. XSS-11 has returned images of its rocket, which leads me to wonder whether it could take them fast enough to make a video showing its rotation: http://www.popsci.com/popsci/aviationspace/c75af8183ef27010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdr crd.html Ted Molczan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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