I went outside tonight to watch a high pass of the ISS and it was "running late." About 5-10 minutes. Beautiful pass though.
When I came into the shack to check SatPC32, I discovered the current download of nasabare keps was dated 11/4.
Apparently the ISS made a maneuver to accept the Dragon capsule and slightly raised its orbit.
Oh well, it's always fun to watch the ISS go over.
Ron W5RKN
Interesting. It was right on time (visually) here in central Florida. Last night, too. Even winked out within 5 seconds of prediction. Tracked with ISS Discovery on iPhone 8, so I have no idea of the Keps date/time. It just does it by magic.
Ed K9EK EL98
On 11/18/2020 8:14 PM Ronald Parsons via AMSAT-BB amsat-bb@amsat.org wrote:
I went outside tonight to watch a high pass of the ISS and it was "running late." About 5-10 minutes. Beautiful pass though.
When I came into the shack to check SatPC32, I discovered the current download of nasabare keps was dated 11/4.
Apparently the ISS made a maneuver to accept the Dragon capsule and slightly raised its orbit.
Oh well, it's always fun to watch the ISS go over.
Ron W5RKN
Sent via AMSAT-BB@amsat.org. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Were you or anyone else able to see Dragon too?
73, John Brier KG4AKV
On Wed, Nov 18, 2020 at 9:41 PM EDWARD KROME via AMSAT-BB amsat-bb@amsat.org wrote:
Interesting. It was right on time (visually) here in central Florida. Last night, too. Even winked out within 5 seconds of prediction. Tracked with ISS Discovery on iPhone 8, so I have no idea of the Keps date/time. It just does it by magic.
Ed K9EK EL98
On 11/18/2020 8:14 PM Ronald Parsons via AMSAT-BB amsat-bb@amsat.org wrote:
I went outside tonight to watch a high pass of the ISS and it was "running late." About 5-10 minutes. Beautiful pass though.
When I came into the shack to check SatPC32, I discovered the current download of nasabare keps was dated 11/4.
Apparently the ISS made a maneuver to accept the Dragon capsule and slightly raised its orbit.
Oh well, it's always fun to watch the ISS go over.
Ron W5RKN
Sent via AMSAT-BB@amsat.org. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Sent via AMSAT-BB@amsat.org. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Hey, I'm north of 70; just glad I can still see the moving light anyway! But we did see the launch from 70 miles away. That's just moving lights, too. Pretty cool.
Ed K9EK
On 11/18/2020 9:55 PM John Brier johnbrier@gmail.com wrote:
Were you or anyone else able to see Dragon too?
73, John Brier KG4AKV
On Wed, Nov 18, 2020 at 9:41 PM EDWARD KROME via AMSAT-BB amsat-bb@amsat.org wrote:
Interesting. It was right on time (visually) here in central Florida. Last night, too. Even winked out within 5 seconds of prediction. Tracked with ISS Discovery on iPhone 8, so I have no idea of the Keps date/time. It just does it by magic.
Ed K9EK EL98
On 11/18/2020 8:14 PM Ronald Parsons via AMSAT-BB amsat-bb@amsat.org wrote:
I went outside tonight to watch a high pass of the ISS and it was "running late." About 5-10 minutes. Beautiful pass though.
When I came into the shack to check SatPC32, I discovered the current download of nasabare keps was dated 11/4.
Apparently the ISS made a maneuver to accept the Dragon capsule and slightly raised its orbit.
Oh well, it's always fun to watch the ISS go over.
Ron W5RKN
Sent via AMSAT-BB@amsat.org. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Sent via AMSAT-BB@amsat.org. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
About a week ago it was found https://community.libre.space/t/tle-issue-satellite-with-old-tles-2020-11-09/6935, as acknowledged on space-track.org, that TLE updates had stopped for a number of days. Given that this is the core source for most TLE feeds today, a disruption is to be expected, but we found their feeds had recovered around Nov 11.
Celestrak and calpoly are both up to date on ISS. AMSAT is the only source I am aware of associated with nasabare.txt so I will assume that is where you are pulling from, and the ISS element in that file is definitely behind (as of this email). I don't know how this file is updated - the delay could either be coincidental or maybe the upstream issue from a week back has wedged something in the process?
So, you are right about the orbital adjustments in times like this, but you are also correct that the TLE is behind as well.
Cheers, -Corey KB9JHU
On Wed, Nov 18, 2020 at 8:16 PM Ronald Parsons via AMSAT-BB < amsat-bb@amsat.org> wrote:
I went outside tonight to watch a high pass of the ISS and it was "running late." About 5-10 minutes. Beautiful pass though.
When I came into the shack to check SatPC32, I discovered the current download of nasabare keps was dated 11/4.
Apparently the ISS made a maneuver to accept the Dragon capsule and slightly raised its orbit.
Oh well, it's always fun to watch the ISS go over.
Ron W5RKN
Sent via AMSAT-BB@amsat.org. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
Hi Ron.
Apparently the ISS made a maneuver to accept the Dragon capsule and slightly raised its orbit.
I vaguely remember back in the Salyut 7 and Mir days that an indication the Russians were about to launch a spacecraft to dock with either of these space stations was when the the eccentricity of their orbits were brought closer to zero (a.k.a. "circularized").
Last night's visible pass (based on Keps issues yesterday from Celestrak) was right on target. PREDICT's eclipse alarm rang EXACTLY when the ISS entered into eclipse. :-)
It was nice to see Jupiter, Saturn, and the crescent Moon hanging out together, too. ;-)
73 de John, KD2BD
It seems that NASA is retiring the system that provides the report containing ISS orbital data, and a new comment to that effect in the report confused the nasabare.txt update script, so it was failing over to the most recent elements published in the weekly AMSAT bulletin which Ray Hoad derives from SpaceTrack. I tweaked the script so nasabare.txt is updating properly now.
This soon to be retired NASA system still provides elements in the "AMSAT Verbose" format that even we abandoned years ago. For the old timers current elements are:
Satellite: ISS Catalog Number: 25544 Epoch time: 20323.25327528 = yrday.fracday Element set: 906 Inclination: 51.6450 deg RA of node: 306.1314 deg Eccentricity: .0001516 Arg of perigee: 60.9923 deg Mean anomaly: 299.1379 deg Mean motion: 15.49080479 rev/day Decay rate: 1.67170E-04 rev/day^2 Epoch rev: 1589 Checksum: 314
The replacement system will provide orbital data in the form of "state vectors" (XYZ position and velocity) rather than the classical Keplerian elements, so I get to learn the subtleties of conversion. My vocabulary word for the day: "osculating".
de KM1P Joe
participants (6)
-
Corey Shields -
EDWARD KROME -
John Brier -
John Magliacane -
Joseph B. Fitzgerald -
Ronald Parsons