brighton@pixar.UUCP (Bill Carson) (09/29/88)
Anyone have any orbital elements for the current shuttle mission?
Failing that, does anyone know if the ground track will take it over
the San Francisco area (date and time would be appreciated too :-)
Thanks.
--
Bill Carson ...!{ucbvax,sun}!pixar!brightonphil@titan.rice.edu (William LeFebvre) (09/30/88)
In article <2493@pixar.UUCP> brighton@pixar.UUCP (Bill Carson) writes: >Failing that, does anyone know if the ground track will take it over >the San Francisco area (date and time would be appreciated too :-) The orbits only go ar far north as 28.5 degrees. San Francisco is about 38 degrees. In short: no way. Discovery will never even go directly over Houston. From what I can tell, it will come closest to you (due south) on orbits 18, 49, 80, and 34, 65, 96 (remember that it's scheduled to re-enter on orbit 64). I'm too lazy to try and figure out what day and time that will be, but the chart does have METs for those orbits if you really want to know. William LeFebvre Department of Computer Science Rice University <phil@Rice.edu>
fwb@cci632.UUCP (Fred Brunner) (10/01/88)
Bill Carson ...!{ucbvax,sun}!pixar!brighton asked:
> Anyone have any orbital elements for the current shuttle mission?
> Failing that, does anyone know if the ground track will take it over
> the San Francisco area (date and time would be appreciated too :-)
I sent for the NASA SPARK (Shuttle Prediction and Recognition Kit)
mentioned here a few weeks ago. It arrived just in time.
It does not include orbital elements, but allows predictions of
visibility based on an elaborate map (which is reprinted for each
mission) and simple time calculations.
The first thing that became clear is that most of the USA will have
little chance of seeing the shuttle during this mission. The inclination
to the equator is as low as practical (28.5 degrees). This means it
will never over-fly any spot north (or south) of that latitude. At
its altitude, it will never be above the horizon for anyone above
35 degrees north. San Francisco (and New York state) are out of luck.
On future, high inclination, missions we might have a chance. Visibility
is governed by the relative position of both the shuttle and the sun. A
few 10 minute windows might exist in each mission.
I would be interested if anyone has software and a source of orbital elements
for visual satellite spotting.
Fred Brunner - Computer Consoles, Inc., Rochester NYcar@pte.UUCP (Chris Rende) (10/04/88)
In article <18800@cci632.UUCP>, fwb@cci632.UUCP (Fred Brunner) writes: > I sent for the NASA SPARK (Shuttle Prediction and Recognition Kit) > mentioned here a few weeks ago. It arrived just in time. Where/how did you get this "NASA SPARK"? How much does it cost? car. -- Christopher A. Rende Multics,DTSS,Shortwave,Scanners,StarTrek uunet!edsews!rphroy!pte!car TRS-80 Model I: Buy Sell Trade Motorola VME 1131 M68020 System V Release 2 v2.2 Precise Technology & Electronics, Inc.
poole@ut-emx.UUCP (Steve Poole) (10/04/88)
In article <18800@cci632.UUCP> fwb@cci632.UUCP (Fred Brunner) writes: > >I would be interested if anyone has software and a source of orbital elements >for visual satellite spotting. > There is a good program for the Macintosh called MacSat. It does all sorts of things, including calculating times and positions for visual satellite spotting. Here's the info on MacSat. As of 8/88, the program cost $10. You can get the program by sending $10 to Bek Developers 1732 74th Circle NE St. Petersburg, FL 33702 As for getting orbit elements, orbit elements are posted about once a week to sci.space, under the title of NASA Prediction Bulletins. The MacSat program can read that file once you get it to a Mac and strip off the top and bottom lines, leaving only orbit elements in the file. -- Steve Poole ARPA: poole@emx.utexas.edu UUCP: {ames,angband,exodus,gatech,harvard,im4u,mordor,rutgers}!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!poole
cgs@umd5.umd.edu (Chris Sylvain) (10/04/88)
In article <6546@ut-emx.UUCP> poole@emx.utexas.edu (Steve Poole) writes: >In article <18800@cci632.UUCP> fwb@cci632.UUCP (Fred Brunner) writes: >> >>I would be interested if anyone has software and a source of orbital elements >>for visual satellite spotting. > >As for getting orbit elements, orbit elements are posted about >once a week to sci.space, under the title of NASA Prediction >Bulletins. ... Since this is sci.space.shuttle, I'm going to assume you're interested in the elements for an orbiting shuttle, too.. WA3NAN at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD retransmits the voice traffic between the shuttle and ground stations. They often also read the latest Keplerian (sp?) elements for the orbiter (sometimes as "old" as 15 minutes!) during the breaks in the voice traffic. WA3NAN begins its day about an hour after the "wake-up" call to the orbiter and continues through the astronaut's day to the "pre-sleep activity period". Look (listen) for WA3NAN in February, following the DOD mission(s). There are no voice traffic feeds to WA3NAN during DOD missions. During the last mission WA3NAN was on: 3860 kHz, 7185 kHz (with intermittent dropouts the second to last day [it got fixed]), 14295 kHz, and also 21.x MHz. The 14295 kHz signal seemed to gave good coverage even in Canada and to the West Coast, although the interference during the weekend was very bad (apparently intentional interference). Bad enough that I listened instead at 7185 kHz. WA3NAN announced that the facilities will be much improved at their station in time for the February mission, which among others, will include the use of an IMAX camera. Listening to that ought to be almost as much fun as watching the film ... almost. -- --==---==---==-- .. and the mome raths outgrabe. .. ARPA: cgs@umd5.UMD.EDU BITNET: cgs%umd5@umd2 UUCP: ..!uunet!umd5.umd.edu!cgs
mam@gvgspd.GVG.TEK.COM (Mark A. Matthews) (10/05/88)
>In article <18800@cci632.UUCP> fwb@cci632.UUCP (Fred Brunner) writes: >> >>I would be interested if anyone has software and a source of orbital elements >>for visual satellite spotting. >> In article <6546@ut-emx.UUCP> poole@emx.utexas.edu (Steve Poole) writes: > >There is a good program for the Macintosh called MacSat. It... [ .. information text deleted ..] I recently sent a copy of this to comp.binaries.mac. Watch that newsgroup for it. -- -Mark (mam@gvgspd.GVG.TEK.COM -or- ..!tektronix!gvgpsa!gvgspd!mam)
tif@cpe.UUCP (10/06/88)
Written 9:53 am Oct 4, 1988 by umd5.UUCP!cgs in cpe:sci.space.shuttle >Look (listen) for WA3NAN in February, following the DOD mission(s). There >are no voice traffic feeds to WA3NAN during DOD missions. During the last >mission WA3NAN was on: 3860 kHz, 7185 kHz (with intermittent dropouts the >second to last day [it got fixed]), 14295 kHz, and also 21.x MHz. The >14295 kHz signal seemed to gave good coverage even in Canada and to the West >Coast, although the interference during the weekend was very bad (apparently >intentional interference). Bad enough that I listened instead at 7185 kHz. Some people believe the only stupid question is the one that isn't asked... Would a hobbyist with a scanner be able to get it in Dallas/Ft Worth Texas? Paul Chamberlain Computer Product Engineering, Tandy Corp. {convex,killer}!ninja!cpe!tif