Ron Lee <ronlee@pcisys.net> writes >http://www.ktxs.com/ The report has a photo and indicates a time of 19:15 local time, presumably 00:15 UTC on the 14th, and says the direction was W->E and the duration 45 seconds. The earlier report by Bill Davis suggests that it was seen from Oklahoma and Kansas. I speculate that this was the decay of an object from the Proton launch of three Glonass satellites a few hours before. OIG still lists the objects as "UNK", but I expect they will eventually be called Cosmos 2374/5/6. I calculate that the orbital plane of this launch was over Abilene, Texas, at about 00:13 UTC on a track that would carry any object moving in the plane in a NE to NNE direction towards Oklahoma and Kansas. This direction of motion does not square with the KTXS's W->E report, but it does link nicely with Bill's report. Two decaying objects were catalogued from this launch, and these are the only elsets published for them so far... C 2374? Proton platform 222 x 61 km 1 26567U 0063E 00287.83021579 -.00002476 78281-5 00000-0 0 12 2 26567 64.8447 270.0186 0123550 338.2240 21.4862 16.49218953 04 C 2374? Proton r 154 x 142 km 1 26568U 00063D 00287.76934050 -.00002461 77806-5 00000-0 0 18 2 26568 64.8377 270.1735 0009609 260.3878 99.6226 16.46681843 08 C 2374? Proton r 154 x 142 km 1 26568U 00063E 00288.31593574 .00085130 77824-5 16382-5 0 21 2 26568 64.8375 268.0381 0009565 259.5957 100.5192 16.46782262 98 Note that the only elset issued for the "platform" has it designated as "E", though it has subsequently been re-designated in OIG's on-line catalogue as "D", with the rocket taking the designation "E". Even so, it would be normal for the rocket to have the earlier designation. With no further elsets to hand, it is possible, if not probable, that both objects have already decayed. Note, though, that the second elset for the rocket has an epoch of 00288.3159, corresponding to a time of 07:35 UTC on the 14th, more than seven hours after the fireball report. Provided that SpaceCom has not confused the rocket and the platform, this suggests that only the latter could be a candidate for the Texas event. I don't have a great deal of confidence in the platform's sole elset, but modifying its drag term to force a decay on the orbit over Texas produces a pass 3 degrees to the W of Abilene at ~00:24. Do we have any better time and direction estimates? Alan -- Alan Pickup / COSPAR 2707: 55d53m48.7s N 3d11m51.2s W 156m asl Edinburgh / SatEvo & elsets: http://www.wingar.demon.co.uk/satevo/ Scotland / Decay Watch: http://www.wingar.demon.co.uk/satevo/dkwatch/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Oct 14 2000 - 14:12:39 PDT