They do station-keeping occasionally. Otherwise, orbital mechanics dictates that at least the outlier must cross the other paths twice per orbit. Probably the positions and excentricities have been choosen to keep the triangle as intact as possible during these passes. I made an XYZ prediction at 5 seconds interval for one orbit near the 00248.02127018 Epoch, using Track16; then a short program to find the max and min length of the triangle sides, and the latitude of one object in a pair: DC: 10 km at lat -56.1 to 39 km at lat -4.1 CE: 18 km at lat -14.7 to 47 km at lat -63.7 ED: 40 km at lat -43.5 to 43 km at lat -29.3 It would be easy to use the same data to compute the orientation of the triangle, and even generate three-D images, even a movie, but I don't have the time until work load and other projects are reduced. -- b_gimle@algonet.se (home) http://www.algonet.se/~b_gimle -- -- SeeSat-L / Visual Satellite Observer Home Page found at -- -- http://www2.satellite.eu.org/satintro.html -- From: <Matthew.Fawcett@eastriding.gov.uk> > Does anyone know the orientation of this trio (C,D and E)? Do they > change orientation at all? How far apart are they? > ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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
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