Congratulations Scott, on your discovery of the last of the geosynchronous payloads or rocket-bodies on USSTRATCOM's embargoed list: the Transtage of DSP F7 (77007C / 09855). My solution is similar to yours: DSP F7 r2 35741 X 35825 km 1 09855U 77007C 10267.11648979 .00000000 00000-0 00000-0 0 02 2 09855 13.6654 338.7340 0010017 221.9760 137.9682 1.00287480 04 Arc 20100917.12-0924.21 WRMS resid 0.002 totl 0.002 xtrk Six years ago, Mike Waterman searched his paper archives for official 2-line elements, issued prior to the present embargo, which came into effect in late June 1983. Mike recovered numerous official elsets of 77007C, issued during 1979-83, which Jonathan McDowell placed in his public archive: http://www.planet4589.org/space/elements/09800/S09855 Using Mike McCants' int3, I have propagated the above elements to the dates of those historical elements, and produced the following comparison: http://satobs.org/seesat_ref/misc/77007C_discovery_confirmation.txt The orbits are in excellent agreement, and the object's brightness is consistent with known Transtages; therefore, we can be confident of the discovery. Ted Molczan _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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