re: Saw Mir & STS-86
Walter Nissen (dk058@cleveland.Freenet.Edu)
Tue, 30 Sep 1997 12:37:23 -0400 (EDT)
Jake Rees, JRBURCA@aol.com, writes:
> I use STS Plus. Now, I see the TLE's used were over 24 hours
> old. I can't remember where I found them or exactly when. After
> For the record these are the TLE's I was using. They had NORAD
I think NORAD was defunded quite awhile back. I believe some kind soul
here once said that NORAD was replaced by a unified command called US
SPACECOM.
> numbers in the first line and I edited them out for my convenience.
> MIR
> 1 16609U 86017A 97269.08791867 .00004578 00000-0 61148-4 0 6471
> 2 16609 51.6537 298.8033 0003833 164.6041 195.5025 15.60278275662771
> STS 86
> 1 24964U 9755A 97269.27083333 -.00002225 10894-4 53012-5 0 22
> 2 24964 51.6551 298.0292 0060298 95.8874 143.5308 15.81221107 22
These elsets are from NASA Goddard OIG (and presumably originally from US
SPACECOM), but may have passed thru other hands before you received them.
At 1997-09-27 0147 UTC I fetched a document called something like "Orbital
Elements" or "Sightings" which I found on the Web somewhere below
shuttle.nasa.gov. It is extremely verbose (and therefore hard to
understand) but says in pertinent part:
> This vector is valid for prediction purposes until 270:16: 0: .3 UTC
> Atlantis-Predicted Post NC3
> STS-86
> 1 24964U 97055A 97270.17990931 .00002738 00000-0 36798-4 0 9071
> 2 24964 51.6515 293.3433 0038250 54.8519 305.6217 15.69858480 184
If you take this elset and the one for Mir and run them into a reliable
program like QuickSat (even the very old version I still use) you obtain
something like this:
34.097 117.719 1169. Claremont <--------- 1950 5.5 18 F F F F F
*** 1997 Sept 27 *** Times are UT *** 225 1256
H M S TIM AL AZI C U MAG REVS HGT SHD RNG EW PHS R A DEC
16609 Mir Complex .1
12 29 34 .0 60 40 C 132 -.8 22.9 391 187 446 3.0 97 7 8 53.1
24964 STS-86 .1
12 30 57 .0 61 40 C 132 -1.0 6.2 359 160 408 3.2 96 7 6 52.8
Which is probably rather close to what you saw.
And not too far from what I saw here on the North Coast, 2 revs earlier,
having been able to anticipate their appearance, based on the same info.
16 revs after that they were already docked as seen here.
jonathan.k.weaver1@jsc.nasa.gov and/or J.S.Stich1@jsc.nasa.gov may be
responsible for a perceptible improvement in NASA's release of elsets.
I am grateful for this, and would like to see even more anticipation. I'd
rather be disappointed occasionally due to a delay, rather than always
having inadequate time to notify interested parties.
Claudio Ariotti, ik1sld@ik1sld.org, writes:
> ATLANTIS-MIR undocking will be performed on October 3 15:46 UTC
> (07:13:12 MET) or 14:56 UTC (07:12:22 MET)
Thanks.
Has anyone found the NASA doc which gives this information (and the
anticipated landing time? I can add 9d 20h 24m to 1997-09-26 0234 UTC,
but before I hang any part of my anatomy out in public I prefer to have
confirmation.)?
Cheers.
Walter Nissen dk058@cleveland.freenet.edu
-81.8637, 41.3735, 256m elevation
---
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Lord Acton