karn (06/30/82)
The following is a set of Keplerian elements for STS-4 derived from numbers obtained from the Johnson Space Flight Center: Satellite: sts-4 Epoch time: Tue Jun 29 06:30:49 1982 EDT 82180.43807870 Inclination: 28.4038 deg RA of node: 320.2049 deg Eccentricity: 0.0008500 Arg of perigee: 54.5130 deg Mean anomaly: 351.8915 deg Mean motion: 15.89212148 rev/day Semi major axis: 6682.63 km Period: 90.61 min Apogee: 313.38 km Perigee: 302.01 km An orbit model using these numbers is giving pretty good prediction times for passes over the various NASA tracking stations. As I mentioned in an earlier article, the low inclination results in low maximum elevations as seen from most of the US. Here in northern NJ, maximum elevations of about 6 degrees occur during passes in the middle morning, e.g., 8:30AM EDT. There are some visual passes for observers in the south, e.g, Florida. If you are in the southern US and interested, send me your latitude, longitude and height above sea level, and I'll run my program to see if there are any visible passes at your location. Phil