Good Morning all The message from Tony Beresford re another high satellite refers. >Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2004 12:51:40 +0930 >From: Tony Beresford <dberesford@adam.com.au> >Subject: Another high satellite > > >Looking back thru the RAE tables and the current SSR's the only likely >similarity is the 1967 40 launch. This left a satellite ERS18 and a titan transtage in an >orbit of similar shape , but higher inclination. The last TLE for these objects has epoch May >1968. It should not be too difficult to confirm whether this is 67040D,aka ERS20, aka OV5-3 as this used to transmit on 136.260 Mhz having a modulated signal with a period of about 4.56 seconds. I used to regularly monitor this satellite until a few years ago when I last did radio tracking but its quite possible it will still be transmitting. Unfortunately all my radio equipment needs a fair bit of work to get operational again so I am passing the information onto the HEARSAT group as there should be someone there who has the capability to hear it. The signal is quite weak, especially when near apogee, so it will be necessary to operate the satellite receiver in CW or SSB mode. As the satellite approaches perigee the signal becomes strong enough to hear with the receiver in FM mode. It is quite a distinctive signal so if still transmitting will be easy to find. I was never able to deduce a good orbit from my radio observations but was able to predict roughly when to hear it. The orbit now will be widely different from its original orbit which was at an inclination of 32.9 degrees and period 2840 minutes, orbit 8619 x 111529 kms. The satellite itself is octahedron shaped, weighing about 8.6 kg and having sides 0.28 metre wide so its pretty small ( ie faint!!). From my observations made over many years I did determine that the inclination went through a wide range - if I remember correctly of the order of tens of degrees as a result of solar/lunar perturbations which made the orbit determination rather difficult. Hope this helps Cheers Greg ex radio satellite tracker - now too old to play around with antenna's! (Last time I did I fell off the ladder and now suffer the consequences with a gammy back!) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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