mcdowell@cfa250.harvard.edu (Jonathan McDowell) (11/23/88)
NORAD's orbital elements for the Buran flight, if anyone's interested: Object: 19637 (1988-100A) ElSet: 3 Epoch: 88320.17858346 Rev: 1 Inc: 51.6203 Arg P: 109.7433 Ecc: 0.0006023 Node: 262.0967 Anom: 97.9456 Mean Motion: 16.08201012 The corresponding orbit is 248 by 256 km, suggesting that an OMS circularization burn had taken place before this data was taken. That altitude is reasonably typical of the US shuttle post OMS-2 burn orbit. Note that the inclination is the same as that of the launches by the Proton launch vehicle (and,of course, the Mir orbit). No other object associated with the Buran launch was tracked. Meanwhile, the Mir crew are littering space a bit, with another half dozen garbage bags ejected from Mir last week. They'll burn up pretty quickly, though. Only two catalog numbers were assigned for the recent Titan 34D launch, USA-33, implying a single payload and a rocket stage. This suggests that rumours of a double SDS launch may be incorrect.