[Neocp_artsats] CDFNX62 = ZTF1062 = 'Multijunk' recovered

[Bill Gray]

Hello all,

    'Multijunk' is a bit of aluminized plastic insulation,  probably 
about a meter across,  in a roughly 2.9-day geocentric orbit.  It was 
identified as such sometime around 2017;  I realized that what appeared 
to be several artificial satellites were actually one,  being pushed 
around by sunlight into a changing orbit.  At that point,  it had been 
on NEOCP about a dozen times,  which is why it's called Multijunk.

    I doubt it's really any different from any other ETBO,  except that 
all the others are in ~1-day orbits.  Multijunk's higher orbit means it 
moves slower and gets spotted by the surveys routinely.  It's now been 
on NEOCP over a hundred times.

    The frequency of such appearances has dropped a bit in recent years 
as my ability to compute orbits for it has improved.  But we go through 
long stretches where it goes unobserved and the ephems go stale.  Months 
go by where it's near the sun or in the galactic plane at apogee,  so 
nobody sees it.  Then it pops up again,  seemingly from nowhere.

    It had last been seen on 24 April.  CDFNX62,  found earlier today, 
could be linked to ZTF1062 from three days earlier.  (Both tracklets are 
currently on NEOCP.)  The result linked to ZTF105j from six days before 
that,  then to ZTF104v,  ZTF104q,  ZTF104e,  and ZTF104Y,  all of which 
were on NEOCP in August.  By that point,  the elements were similar 
enough to the April data for Multijunk to make the identification.

    The ZTF tracklets had all been too short (mostly a couple of 
minutes!) to even be confident that they were of an artsat.  It took the 
longer arc from Catalina to fit everything together.

    I've updated TLEs for the object,  and Sat_ID will be able to 
identify it.  We should be good until the next spell of unobservability 
comes along.

-- Bill