Accelerations !?!?

Kurt Jonckheere (kjonckheere@mail.unicall.be)
Mon, 2 Mar 1998 21:44:54 +0100 (MET)

Mike McCants informed me about possible accelerations of the following
objects : (thanks Mike)

Unfortenately, I didn't had (or made...) time the last months for checking
orbital elements for sudden changes...  Now, it comes out that the objects
below could have been detected doing strange things much earlier... :-(( 

For those who are new : normally the rotation period of a rocket will
increase (slow down) exponentially with respect to time.  But sometimes,
because of fuel leaks (maybe caused by debris/meteorite impact) or 
something else, the rocket will start to rotate faster.
Very often this acceleration of the rocket is also accompagnied with
a sudden change in orbital elements f.i. Mean Motion or Semi Major Axis.
So we have a way to 'predict' when a rocket will accelerate.

21153 Nadezhda 3 r   91019B
---------------------------
This rocket was already accelerating during the end of 1997.
In February 1998, the Semi Major Axis has decreased with about
500 metres !!  This is a very huge amount and will very probably
be accompagnied with a sudden acceleration of the rotation of the
body axis of the rocket.

23527 Cosmos 2310 r  95012B   
---------------------------
Also this one has a decrease of the SMA of about 300 metres during
February.

24306 Cosmos 2334 r  96052C
---------------------------
During the last week the SMA increased with about 100 m.

Observations of these objects are appreciated very much !!

Latest elements courtesy OIG
21153
1 21153U 91019B   98060.89303421  .00000253  00000-0  24860-3 0  9886
2 21153  82.9202  39.9843 0029897  19.8770 340.3531 13.75003633349860
23527
1 23527U 95012B   98060.90445607 -.00000024  00000-0 -42531-4 0  3366
2 23527  82.9384 195.7472 0021530 114.9154 245.4241 13.72871594147603
24306 (still rather high drag value!)
1 24306U 96052C   98060.81928231 -.00001231  00000-0 -13237-2 0  1588
2 24306  82.9375 163.3324 0025302 213.4855 146.4700 13.74111078 74481

----
Jason Hasson was able to observe Gorizont 23, another (much higher)
accelerator (payload in this case)
91- 46 A 98-02-26 19:05     JPH 501.4  0.2 10 50.14
Great !, this obs is fitting very well with an continuous linear decrease
of the period with about 0.01645 s/Day during the last two months.
21533
1 21533U 91046A   98054.71830943 -.00000116  00000-0  10000-3 0   427
2 21533   3.7417  66.7191 0007348  93.8107 266.5675  0.98909261 18457


happy observing,

Kurt Jonckheere
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    Kurt Jonckheere (kjonckheere@unicall.be)  51.2 N  2.9 E  4m ASL 
   (Old accelerations : http://uc2.unicall.be/kjonckheere/index.htm) 
    observations collector for the Belgian Working Group Satellites: 
Send your observations of flashing satellites, preferrably in the correct
             PPAS format to ppas@lists.satellite.eu.org
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