Monday 12 March 2007

Lacrosse 2 running early

Lacrosse 2 (91-017A), the oldest in the Lacrosse (Onyx) SAR-satellite series still in orbit, is running increasingly early. Yesterday evening it already was over 7 seconds early and clearly off-track relative to a 4 day old elset. Is it going down for a de-orbit?

Yesterday evening saw very clear skies. I gathered a nice batch of data: two images (4 positions) on Lacrosse 2 (91-017A), two images (4 positions) on Lacrosse 3 (97-064A), and three images (6 positions) on USA 129 (96-072A). Plus in addition to this, I catched a stray in one of the Lacrosse 3 images, which turned out to be a 22-year-old Russian rocket booster, Kosmos 1689 Rk (85-090B, #16111).

Below is one of the three images I shot of USA 129.

This evening I skipped tracking activities. I am not feeling well and decided to take some rest instead.


(click image to enlarge)

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