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Re: (meteorobs) Another re-entry?


Yes, it appears that the object seen from S England and France at ~22:35 
UTC on December 1 is related to the decay witnessed from Texas and 
Oklahoma a few hours later, around 04:18 UTC.

The rocket concerned, a Proton or "SL-12", was launched from Baikonur at 
21:04 Moscow time (18:04 UTC). It carried three global positioning, or 
navigation, satellite: two Uragan ("Hurricane") satellites and a new 
generation Uragan-M satellite. All three have now reached their 
near-circular orbits at a height of 19,120 km, being catalogued by 
SpaceCom as objects A, B and C from this launch. The fourth catalogued 
object (D) is the Proton rocket, while a fifth object (E) is in a 
similar orbit to A, B and C and is presumably the upper stage rocket (a 
Blok DM-2?) that accomplished the final deployment of the payloads. Now, 
what is missing is any mention of what SpaceCom usually call a 
"Platform", actually a cylindrical casing that (I understand) shrouds at 
least the lower part of the Blok DM during the launch. This is usually 
shed when the Blok DM detaches from the Proton, being left in much the 
same low orbit as the Proton from which it decays more rapidly because 
of its relatively low mass:area ratio. It would normally be expected to 
receive the object designation between the rocket and the Blok DM, so 
(for this launch) I would have expected the Proton to be D, the 
"Platform" to be E and the Block DM to be F.

The fact that SpaceCom did not catalogue it, does not mean that casing 
did not exist. Indeed, I think that this was the object seen to be 
decaying as it tracked north-eastwards across N France towards Calais. 
It would have been on its third orbit at the time and moving along much 
the same track that the Proton itself may have taken:

  Time (UTC)    Lat     Long
   h  m  s    deg N      deg

  22 32  0     44.6      5.1 W
  22 32 30     46.2      3.5 W
  22 33  0     47.9      1.7 W
  22 33 30     49.4       .2 E
  22 34  0     51.0      2.1 E
  22 34 30     52.5      4.3 E
  22 35  0     53.9      6.6 E
  22 35 30     55.3      9.0 E
  22 36  0     56.7     11.7 E
  22 36 30     58.0     14.5 E
  22 37  0     59.2     17.6 E

(Though the casing may have been a few seconds earlier and slightly 
further E)

The Proton survived for another for (almost) another four orbits before 
its decay over the USA.


Alan
-- 
Alan Pickup
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