Dan Laszlo posted: >If the tether is deployed, is it likely the drag has caused a lower >orbit and even earlier arrival than minus 4 minutes? The tles from Space-Track have a fixed value for the BStar term and the drag term. Judging from the very small change in mean motion over the last few days, that drag value (which is very small) should be even smaller. A prediction from a tle that is one week old differs from a prediction by the current tle by only 2 seconds. The perigee is pretty high (about 650 Km) - so even if the tether is deployed, I think the drag will not increase to be greater than the value on the current tles. Mike McCants ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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