Hi Paul, Thanks for your reply! It seems that you and I are in agreement as to the likely identity of 2000 SG344. > I have most definitely not forgotten about 2000 SG344, which I > had been trying to link with an Apollo S-IVB stage. The dynamics > are different with SG344: it is not in an orbit from which it > could have easily escaped from the the Earth-Moon system, except > possibly by a close lunar flyby. The timing does not match any > known Apollo launch, since it was last near the Earth in mid-July > 1971. The only possibly explanation I could see at the time > was the Apollo 12 stage, and that required some unmodeled > accelerations as well. Thanks for the added info -- I was not previously aware that some non-Keplerian effects would be needed to generate a reasonable orbital match between SG344 and the Apollo 12 stage. > It could not be the Apollo 14 S-IVB because that stage impacted > the Moon. Agreed. > Now that we have a much better link with Apollo 12 (ie, J002E3), > we need to seek alternate explanations for SG344. SG344 is a > full magnitude brighter than J002E3, implying that it is > unlikely to be a smaller object such as a rocket stage from > another launch, or one of the Apollo SLA panels, etc. Since > we cannot dynamically link SG344 with any S-IVB known to still > be flying (from Apollos 8 through 11), we are forced to conclude > that it is a natural object. My conclusion as well. There just aren't any manmade bodies large enough that aren't already accounted for. > We'll resume working on SG344 when we get more observations > of the object. I imagine that may be a while! :-) Won't it spend the next 13 or 14 years getting further and further away? Cheers, Rob ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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