SPACEWARN Activities

2009-022A

Cosmos 2450 is a Russian military craft launched by a Soyuz rocket from Plesetsk at 16:58 UT on 29 April 2009.

2009-021A

Yaogan 6 is a remote sensing satellite launched on 22 April 2009 at 02:55 UT on a Long March 2C rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in China's north Shanxi Province.

2009-020A

SICRAL 1B is an Italian military communications satellite launched on a Sea Launch Zenit 3SL rocket at 08:16 UT on 20 April 2009. The 3038 kg satellite was placed in geostationary orbit at 11.8° E longitude. The communications system is intended for use by the Italian military, law enforcement and civil emergency agencies.

2009-019B

ANUSAT is a 40 kg communications technology demonstration satellite built by students at India's Anna University, Chennai. It was launched as a secondary payload with the RISAT 2 on the Indian Space Research Organization's PSLV-C12 rocket on 20 April 2009 at 01:15 UT. The launch took place at the Satish Dhawan Space Center on India's east coast.

2009-019A

RISAT 2 is an all-weather radar imaging satellite. The 300 kg satellite was launched on a PSLV-C12 rocket on 20 April 2009 at 01:15 UT. The launch took place at the Satish Dhawan Space Center on India's east coast.

2009-018A

Beidou, also known as Compass G2, is a navigation satellite intended to form part of an eventual system, also known as Compass, composed of 30 satellites in geostationary and medium altitude orbits. Compass G2 was placed in geostationary orbit and launched by a Long March 3C rocket from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province on 14 April 2009 at 16:16 UT.

2009-017A

WGS F2, the Wideband Global SATCOM 2, also known as USA 204, is a US military communications satellite. The spacecraft was launched on an Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral on 04 April 2009 at 00:31 UT. The satellite will be positioned in geostationary orbit at 60° E longitude and provide communications in the X- and Ka-bands.

2009-016A

W2A is a Eutelsat geostationary communications satellite intended to replace the W1 satellite at 10° E longitude. The satellite was launched at 16:24 UT on 03 April 2009 from Baikonur on a Proton M rocket with a Breeze M upper stage. The 5900 kg spacecraft will provide data and video service to customers across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and parts of South America and India. W2A carries 46 Ku-band and 10 C-band transponders and a new S-band system. The S-band system will provide video and data to mobile devices in Europe.

Global Positioning System satellites useful for navigational purposes and geodetic studies.

High precision (<20 cm) GPS constellation tracking data obtained from the network of about 400 dedicated global stations that are of interest to geodetic study may be obtained through the following services provided by the International GNSS Service (IGS). The IGS is a service of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG).

     FTP:    igscb.jpl.nasa.gov  [directory /igscb]
     WWW:    http://igscb.jpl.nasa.gov/
     E-mail: igscb@cobra.jpl.nasa.gov

The standard format of the GPS situation appeared in SPACEWARN Bulletin No. 518. It will not be repeated since an excellent source of trajectory- and science-related GPS information is at:

http://www.colorado.edu/geography/gcraft/notes/gps/gps_f.html

It provides many links to GPS related databases.

The latest addition to the fleet is GPS 2R-20(M) (2009-014A).

Russian Global Navigational (Positioning) Spacecraft, GLONASS constellation.

SPACEWARN requests updates/additions from readers to this list.

All GLONASS spacecraft are in the general Cosmos series. The Cosmos numbers invoked by USSPACECOM have often differed from the numbers (NNNN) associated in Russia; when different, the USSPACECOM Cosmos numbers are shown in parentheses. The corresponding GLONASS numbers are Russian numbers, followed by the numbers in parentheses that are sometimes attributed to them outside Russia.

The operating frequencies in MHz are computed from the channel number K. Frequencies (MHz) = 1602.0 + 0.5625K and L2 = 1246.0 + 0.4375K.

The standard format of the GLONASS situation last appeared in SPACEWARN Bulletin No. 545. It will not be repeated in view of the excellent updated source at: http://www.glonass-ianc.rsa.ru/ maintained by the Information-Analytical Center (IAC), Russian Space Agency.

According to IAC the latest additions to the fleet are 2008-067A, 2008-067B, and 2008-067C.

Visually bright objects.

See http://www.space-track.org/perl/bulk_files.pl. Users must register. Conditions apply.

Actual decays/landings of payload spacecraft and rocket bodies (R/B) only. No further information is available.

Designations         Common Name                  Decay Date (2009)

2009-004A (33506)    OMID                             25 April
2009-005B (33592)    DELTA 2 R/B                      21 April
1980-018C (11718)    N-1 R/B(2)                       06 April
2008-062C (33449)    SL-6 R/B(1)                      06 April

60-day Decay Predictions.

See http://www.space-track.org/perl/60day_decay_predict.pl. Users must register for access. Conditions apply

Miscellaneous Items.

This section contains information or data that are entered on occasion and may not be repeated in each issue of the SPACEWARN Bulletin.

Related NSSDC resources.

NSSDC/WDC for Satellite Information is an archival center for science data from many spacecraft. Many space physics datasets are on-line for electronic access through:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/space/

For off-line data, please contact the Request Office, NSSDC, Code 690.1, NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, U.S.A., for specific information (nssdc-request@listserv.gsfc.nasa.gov). Information on the current status of the instruments on board from the investigators will be most welcomed. Precomputed trajectory files and orbital parameters of many magnetospheric and heliospheric science-payload spacecraft may be obtained from:
http://nssdcftp.gsfc.nasa.gov/miscellaneous/orbits/

Other files of interest for Earth-centered spacecraft can be generated via the URL,
http://sscweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Programs related to the heliospheric spacecraft trajectories can be executed through the URL:
http://cohoweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/helios/heli.html

Magnetospheric, Planetary, and Astronomical science data from many spacecraft may be accessed through links from the URL:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/