Zeya identification

Agapov Vladimir (avm@kiam1.rssi.ru)
Wed, 5 Mar 1997 16:35:21 +0300

Hello,

Officially announced orbital parameters for Zeya are: 94 min, 97.3 deg,
508.1x472.8 km. This is too close (within 0.1 km) to sets
#5/rev16 and #6/rev16 for the A and #1-#3 for the C. So, I think
there was misidentification of the satellite by U.S.SpaceCom but
now it seems all object are identified correctly and Zeya is A.
Below is TLEs with proper ID and US SpaceCom numbers for Zeya 
(corrections made by me) since launch. Sets #1 and #2 are slightly
different from others but I think this is due to small quantity
of measurements to the time of orbital determination.

1 24744U 97010A   97063.27285650 -.00000074  00000-0  00000+0 0    15
2 24744  97.2739 330.2997 0010214 105.6644 254.5810 15.30811998    21
1 24744U 97010A   97063.53430984  .00090294  00000-0  29911-2 0    24
2 24744  97.2845 330.5493 0009481 104.1406 256.0911 15.30893574    71
1 24744U 97010A   97063.79577058  .00017302  00000-0  58087-3 0    33
2 24744  97.2775 330.8056 0010008  97.4994 262.7376 15.30877826   110
1 24744U 97010A   97064.12259251  .00009306  00000-0  31395-3 0    51
2 24744  97.2839 331.1285 0009472 100.4673 259.7659 15.30876355   160
1 24744U 97010A   97064.12259265  .00006736  00000-0  22804-3 0    66
2 24744  97.2838 331.1283 0009514 100.1948 260.0365 15.30873511   166

Best regards,
   Vladimir Agapov.