Greg Roberts observed USA 202 last night, running more than 1 minute early relative 3 day old elements, which indicates that it has manoeuvred, most likely to synchronous mean motion. Here are approximate elements: USA 202 35745 X 35829 km 1 33490U 09001A 09181.05374560 .00000000 00000-0 00000-0 0 01 2 33490 2.8425 341.7527 0010000 87.0522 273.1975 1.00274000 04 Arc 20090630.9-0630.9 WRMS resid 0.001 totl 0.000 xtrk It is located near 44.4 E. It briefly settled there in late April, then suddenly and fairly rapidly moved back east to about 49 E, whereupon it quickly reversed course, and slowly drifted back to 44.4 E. It will be interesting to see how long it stays this time. Sister spacecraft 98029A / 25336 has called 44.4 E home for as long as we have observed it - since March 2003. It is possible that the manoeuvre occurred prior to Peter Wakelin's observations of the night of Jun 27-28 UTC, but I will wait for future observations to help decide. Ted Molczan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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