On 3 Dec 2003 at 23:28, FrankReedCT@aol.com wrote: > I've enjoyed the ISS height profile graphic on Heavens-Above.com > for many years. I noticed today that the station is about to fall > off the bottom and be eaten by dragons :-). It's been a long time > since the station's orbit has been boosted significantly. Is there > a schedule of planned orbit changes anywhere? Possibly one on spaceflight.nasa.gov, or if you ask on news:sci.space.station someone might know. Certainly someone might know better than I do :-) If hazy memory serves, and it's quite possible it doesn't <g>, the reboosts can be done by Progress resupply craft, by the inbuilt engines in Zarya (? - the Russian base module), or by Shuttle -but they prefer not to use the on-board engines (to conserve fuel), and Progress has less reboost capacity than Shuttle does. Since Shuttle hasn't been to the station for a year, and may be spending up to another year away, big honking reboosts (this is Not A Technical Term) are likely to be thin on the ground. (RTF is, what, next September now?) There has been talk of extra fuel on a Progress or the like, but I don't know what's happening with this. I don't believe reboost is considered one of the "pacing issues", though, so the Station will likely be okay as-is until after return-to-flight. > By the way, has anybody archived these graphics for the past few years? I haven't, but the nice people there may well have done - drop them a line and ask? ObSatObs: I do try to make a practice of observing ISS when I can, and dragging people to see it; it has an inherent gosh-wow feature. Timings have in the past militated against me seeing the "close- formation" sight of a not-quite-docked Shuttle or Soyuz - has anyone here observed an undocking, or the two moving apart? It strikes me that a bright dot separating into two would be an interesting sight... -- -Andrew Gray andrew@generalist.org.uk ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from SeeSat-L, send a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@satobs.org List archived at http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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