[Neocp_artsats] Four artsats from NEOCP
Bill Gray
pluto at projectpluto.com
Mon Nov 11 19:39:35 EST 2024
The first three are cases where atmospheric drag threw predictions off :
(1) A11e7Ki = 2023-137E = SLIM booster. David Rankin at CSS noticed
this one promptly, and found another tracklet for it from (703) data.
So it didn't stay on NEOCP very long.
We had kept careful track of this object for the first half of the
year. Then it hit atmospheric drag and we lost it. (T05) ATLAS got it
a few degrees off nominal. That was close enough for David to see the
link, but a little much for Sat_ID. So it ended up on NEOCP.
The (T05) data, plus David's (703) tracklet, enabled me to link in
A11d6Fy, a short arc on NEOCP from October 20. At the time, the arc
was too short to say anything except that A11d6Fy was junk. Now, it's
securely identified as 2023-137E = SLIM booster.
As expected earlier, the object will hit the atmosphere again and
re-enter near the end of the year :
https://www.projectpluto.com/pluto/mpecs/23137e.pdf
(2) Sar2783 = 'Multijunk'. Again, we hadn't observed the object
for some time and it had drifted quite a bit from prediction.
(3) A11dPcF = 2022-157B. We normally just rely on Space-Track TLEs
for this object. It hit the upper atmosphere in mid-October, and it
appears Space-Track didn't notice (this has happened several times
before). This will lower its orbital period from about 1140 minutes to
about 920 minutes :
https://www.projectpluto.com/pluto/mpecs/22157b.pdf
Since we can't rely on Space-Track for it anymore, I've generated
TLEs for it.
(4) AlldXi4 is a plain, ordinary empty trash bag object. (Q06) in
Japan got a tracklet on it, which enables determining an area/mass
ratio of 34 +/- 5 m^2/kg, right in the range we expect for ETBOs :
https://www.projectpluto.com/neocp2/mpecs/A11dXi4.htm
I can't link it to any previous tracklets.
-- Bill
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