>Ed Cannon wrote: > >>What thoughts does anyone have any on the following element sets, >>which I just got from OIG? I wrote: >All of these elsets are crazy. However, some time has passed and the elsets have stabilized: Orion 3 1 25727U 99024A 02069.93871133 +.00000089 +00000-0 +10000-3 0 05277 2 25727 019.8336 315.3093 0041194 174.5691 185.5084 10.39123598146789 We observed this object on Saturday evening and we found a regular light variation with a period of about 20 seconds and an intrinsic magnitude that was close enough to Orion 3. Ed contacted OIG last week and they said that Spacecom said that the owners had changed the orbit of the object. So apparently the "weird" elsets were valid transition elsets as the object was maneuvered from a 29 degree inclination eccentric orbit into a higher, 20 degree circular orbit. Ed found year-old references to a possible "Shuttle rescue mission". It would seem that such a rescue is no longer being considered, so some payload fuel was used to boost Orion 3 into a higher, circular orbit. Mike McCants ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Mar 11 2002 - 14:07:22 EST