snowdog@athena.mit.edu (Richard the Nerd) (12/05/88)
Despite worsening pass conditions as Atlantis exits the evening visibility window, we made sightings of Atlantis again tonight. The Lacrosse radar satellite is still station-keeping with Atlantis (as of 2300 UTC on the fourth of December). The two were viewed on a low elevation pass and were of comparable brightness (about mag. +4), so it was hard to tell which was which. They were about 4 seconds apart. New elements were computed, and this set fits all the sightings made up to date best. Tonight it predicted a pass about 30 seconds late compared to what was actually observed around 2308 UTC Dec. 4. Object: STS-27 Epoch: 88337.666018 ndot/2: 0.0001 n2dot/6: 0.0 bstar: 0.3e-3 Inclination: 57.0 deg RA of node: 189.2 deg Eccentricity: 0.0 Arg. Perigee: 0.0 Mean Anomaly: 0.0 Mean Motion: 15.39 Rev: 1 This should give pretty good predictions for tomorrow. Good luck! -Rich PS there was a mailer crash here tonight - any mail to me that was not replied to should be resent. (sorry, not my fault ;-)