Imaging MiTEx 2

In 2006, the USA launched two experimental geosynchronous satellites, MiTEx 1 and MiTEx 2 (2006-024A and 2006-024B). MiTEx is an acronym that stands for Micro-satellite Technology Experiment. These small satellites were reportedly a technology demonstration and a project of DARPA, the US Air Force and US Navy. Being small (225 kg each) and hence difficult to detect, they explored the possibility of covertly sneaking up on and inspecting other satellites. In this sense, they appear to be part of the Prowler legacy.

In 2009, both the MiTEx satellites were used to inspect the classified US military DSP-23 satellite which had malfunctioned on-orbit in 2008 and had started to drift, physically endangering other satellites and interfering with their radio communications. This inspection was actually observed by amateur trackers in the UK and South Africa.

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Since both satellites are small, they are faint and difficult to image. It requires large instruments. On 11 August 2012, I imaged MiTEx 2 using the 61-cm telescope of Sierra Stars Observatory. It is the faint trail in the image above (which is a 30-second CCD exposure guided on the stars).

This is not the first time though that I have imaged one of the MiTEx-es  (for example, the image of MiTEx 1 here, which happens to be the last positive observation before we lost that object, perhaps due to a manoeuvre: in fact, it was already slightly off its predicted position that March 15).

"Spying on the spooks" and other recent media coverage of my activities

Jeff Shear has just published a background piece on amateur satellite observations, largely based on my activities, in the Pacific Standard: "Spying on the Spooks".

Earlier this year, Ann Finkbeiner wrote a similar piece for the "The Last Word on Nothing" science blog: "Watching the Watchers".

A few minor corrections to the "Spying on the Spooks" story: the total number of objects we track is closer to 300 (not 100), and I didn't discover the asteroid (183294) that was named after me: Stefan Kürti/NEAT did.

CBERS 2B flash pattern

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Last night I set up the camera with a Tamron 2.8/17-50mm lens set at f3.2/17mm to run automatically (using an Aputure timer), in order to catch some Perseids.

AS part of the image series, I captured a satellite showing a regular flash pattern. The top image above is a stack of 7 images of 20s each, showing the repeated flashing (including a brighter flare).

It turned out to be CBERS 2B (07-042A) which was launched from China on 19 September 2007 as the third Chinese-Brazilian Earth Resources Satellite. It ceased operations in June 2010.

By measuring the positions of the flashes and relating these to a recent TLE, I was able to determine the flash pattern. It is a combination of two series: one with flashes each 23.7s (series a), and another one (which includes the bright flare) with flashes each 47.4s (series b). The latter is the double of the series a period. The sequence of flashes is a-a-b-a-a-b-a-a-b but the b-flashes are not nicely in the middle of the a-series flashes.

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The two series probably relate to different reflective surfaces. The flashes from series a are conspicuously orange, while those from series b are bluish-white.

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As can be seen on the CBERS website, the satellite body itself is wrapped in orange insulation foil, suggesting the orange flashes could be reflections from the satellite body. The bluish-white flashes could be from the solar panels. The satellite would then rotate once each 94.8 seconds during which 2 solar panel flares and 4 body flares (4 sides of the cubus) can be seen.

CBERS 2B was not the only satellite captured flaring this night: I'll report on the other later. Amongst others, Envisat was seen flaring again.

Perseids

I indeed captured some meteors as well: 7 Perseids and one sporadic meteor. Here is a nice Perseid:

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OT: night-sky time lapse, Dolomites

The movie above, which you should see on full resolution rather than in the small embedded version above, is a time-lapse I made using images shot during my holidays in the Dolomites.

The movie starts with imagery shot from Aldein (Aldino) at 1188m over a 4h42m period on July16. Apart from stars and  at about 20s in the movie the Milky Way entering the FOV, a number of satellites (and aircraft) are visible.

The movie ends with a (too) short clip of stars circling the celestial pole, based on a 25 minute image series shot from Vajolet at 2238m, in the Dolomites properly, on 23 July.

All images were made using the Canon EOS 60D + Tamron 2.8/17-50mm at 17mm, 2000 ISO, 30-second exposures.

ENVISAT and other satellites flaring over the Italian Dolomites

During the second half of July, I travelled through northern Italy, including an 8-day mountain hike from mountain hut to mountain hut through the high Alpine parts (up to 2770 m) of the Rosengarten Dolomites. The latter mountains are truely marvelous, and perhaps the most beautiful mountains I have ever seen.

During two clear evenings I did some limited astrophotography: limited, as because of weight considerations I had only two lenses with me  (a Canon EF 100mm Macro and a Tamron 17-50mm zoom) . After all, we already had to carry 16 kg on our backs every day while scaling the mountain.

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The image above was shot at 2238m altitude from Rifugio Vajolet on July 23rd. It shows ENVISAT (02-009A) flaring. Since contact with this legendary Europe remote sensing satellite was lost on 8 April 2012, it appears to have started to tumble. Two brightness maxima (one brighter and one fainter preceding it) are visible on the original of the above 30 second exposure, and other (faint) maxima are visible on an earlier and on subsequent images.

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A 45 image series (30s exposure each) from the same location was used to create the above image of startrails circling the celestial pole. The mountain at right is the 3004m high Kesselkügel.

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A few days earlier (16 July), while at lower altitude (1188m) in Aldein (Aldino) where we visited the nearby Bletterbachschlucht, I shot this image of a double Iridium flare. The brighter of the two is Iridium 63, the other one is Iridium 14. The classified Japanese satellite IGS 7A (11-075A) can be seen as well as a fainter steady trail near the center of the image (the original image has 3 more very faint satellite trails as well). The bright star top right is Arcturus.

All images were made with a Canon EOS 60D at 2000 ISO (and part of image series driven by a programmable timer) using a Tamron 2.8/17-50mm set at 17mm.

The re-entry of IGS 1B on 26 July 2012

While I was away on holidays, the Japanese spy satellite IGS 1B (03-009B) that malfunctioned in March 2007, re-entered on 26 July 2012, over Polynesia.

The demise of this satellite was covered for over a year on this blog: as the satellite was weighing 1.2 tons and as it had an unknown amount of remnant fuel onboard, the uncontrolled reentry raised some questions and initial concerns (see coverage here).

The last amateur observations of the object were done by Mike Waterman (USA) on July 24th and Alain Figer (France) in evening twilight of July 25th. The last amateur orbital update by Ted Molczan based on a.o. Mike Waterman's observations, showed it to have descended to a 211 x 213 km orbit on July 24th and analysis of this dataset by this author using Alan Pickup's SatEvo suggests reentry on July 26, somewhere between approximately 9:50 and 10:50 UTC.

USSTRATCOM published a final TIP for IGS 1B on July 26th (that they did so for a classified object is unusual), placing re-entry at 26 July 2012, 09:52 +/- 2 min UTC, near 25 S, 186 E, which is near New Zealand. This is at the start of the reentry window given above and hence seems very reasonable even though the reentry coordinates are a verbatim copy (down to one decimal) of a pre-decay prediction issued at 7:34 UTC (only the uncertainty value has changed, from 2 hours to 2 minutes). No details on the orbital development in the final few revolutions were given.

The map below shows the USSTRATCOM determined reentry location and final trajectory. In principle, the re-entry could have been observed from the northern islands of New Zealand and potentially the Fiji-Tonga area. Note that only half a revolution later (about 30 minutes later) it would have passed over NW Europe and next west Africa.

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The diagram below shows the orbital evolution in terms of apogee and perigee altitudes, from malfunction early 2007 to decay on 26 July 2012. It is based on orbital element sets calculated by Mike McCants and Ted Molczan from amateur observations, including mine:

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2

IGS 1B was a nice object to observe over the past years: it was bright, and it was interesting to follow its orbital evolution towards decay. The observation that remains the most vivid imprint in my memory is the one that resulted in the picture below: on 2 September 2011, while I was watching and photographing a pass in a slightly hazy sky, the satellite brightly flared to at least magnitude -8 if not more: the brightest satellite flare I have ever seen. I was jumping up and down and yelling "WOOOOOWWWW!!!!" when this happened. It resulted in this wonderful, eerie picture:

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A flashing GPS satellite (Navstar 39, USA 128)

This blog's readers will be familiar with the Global Positioning System (GPS). These US navigational satellites provide us with navigational aid, whether you are on a boat, aircraft, in a vehicle, hiking, or just using your cellphone. Our modern world would be nowhere without them.

But have you ever seen a GPS satellite?

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In the evening of June 25 I by chance captured one of the 41 operational a GPS satellite that was decommisioned last year on photograph: Navstar 39 (USA 128, GPS 2A-27, 1996-056A). It showed up as a very bright small trail  and was flashing at a rate of  2-3 flashes per 10 seconds. Above is a compilation of the photographs taken (Canon EOS 60D with Samyang 1.4/85mm lens).

GPS satellites do not usually get this bright: the satellite was evidently flaring due to a favourable sun-satellite-observer line-up. As this is a decommisioned satellite, the flashing could be due (I am not sure) to the satellite having lost attitude control and being spinning.

30 (mostly) geostationary objects in one image

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The image above was made by me just after midnight of June 18-19, 2012. It is a single image taken with my new Canon EOS 60D and a SamYang 1.4/85mm lens (800 ISO, 10s exposure). It was shot from the center of Leiden town.

The image shows a 11 x 14 degrees wide field low in the south-southeastern sky, between 20 and 30 degrees elevation above the horizon. Diagonally over the image runs a part of the geostationary belt, at declination -7.4 deg for my location.

In this single image, as much as 30 mostly geostationary satellites are visible: 23 commercial geostationary satellites, 1 classified military geostationary satellite (Milstar 5, 2002-001A), and 6 rocket boosters.

I did a poor job with the focus of this image, resulting in a slight unsharpness (especially near the edges of the image). Yet, the number of  objects nevertheless visible in this small piece of low southern sky is amazing!

This is just one of several images I took that night. Apart from Milstar 5, a number of other classified (military) geostationary satellites were imaged and astrometry on them obtained.



PAN in it's new position at 37.9 E

One of these objects is PAN (2009-047A), an enigmatic satellite I have written about before. Here is an image from June 18-19:

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One of the curious aspects of this strange classified geostationary satellite operated by an undisclosed agency (see Dwayne Day's article in The Space Review), is that it is very frequently repositioned. It recently did so again (see my imagery of May 16, when it was still on the move). It has now stopped drifting and taken up position at 37.9 deg E (a position it has occupied before) not far from Paksat 1R, as can be seen in the image above. A stray Atlas Centaur rocket booster passed the area as well when the image was taken.


Vortex 4 and Mercury 2

Other classified objects imaged include  the older geostationary satellites Vortex 4 (1984-009A) and Mercury 2 (96-026A), the latter of which currently also is on the move (it is probably being sent to a disposal orbit after reaching the end of its operational mission):

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Vortex 4  (launched on 31 January 1984) and Mercury 2 (USA 118, launched on 24 April 1996) both are SIGINT (eaves-dropping) satellites, with the Mercury being a further advanced version of the Vortex.

In addition, a newer SIGINT satellite was imaged as well,  Mentor 4 (2009-001A, one that frequently features in this observational blog, as it is bright and easy to observe), and the object designated by our amateur network as  UNK 060616 (probably an old r/b).


Prowler, AEHF 1 and DSP F15 imaged from Winer observatory, USA

While the above imaging was all done from my home in the Netherlands, I also imaged a few objects 'remotely' using the UoI Rigel (MPC 857) 37-cm Cassegrain telescope at Winer Observatory, Sonoita, Arizona, USA.

The enigmatic Prowler (1990-097E), a clandestine launch from Space Shuttle mission STS-38 which has featured on this blog more often (read the intriguing story of Prowler here; plenty of suspense!) was imaged on June 19 and 22. On June 19 I also imaged the military communications satellite AEHF 1 (2010-039A), and on June 22 the old DSP Infra-red early-warning satellite DSP F15 (1990-095A). Images of these objects below:

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Comet 185P/Petriew

In addition to all these satellites, two  Solar System Minor Bodies were imaged: 2012 LZ1 and 185P/Petriew.

I posted imagery of the June 15 fly-by of Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) 2012 LZ1 here before in my previous post, and obtained more astrometry on this object on subsequent nights. In addition, I obtained some imagery on the faint periodic comet 185P/ Petriew on June 22. Below is a stack of 5 images of 45s exposure each:

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Not a pretty picture, but the comet was near magnitude +17 to +18! My astrometry has been included in MPEC 2012-M33 (22 June).


New camera: a Canon EOS 60D

I had completely forgotten to mention this: during the second half of May, my EOS 450D camera broke down. During a macro-session on Dragonflies, the shutter broke. Much to my regret.

I had the choice between having the shutter repaired (expensive), or buying a new camera. I choose the latter option, as the new generation of EOS cameras performs notably better than the 450D, especially in performance at high ISO (less noise). So I decided to upgrade.

The choice I made was for the Canon EOS 60D, an 18 MP DSLR with Digic IV processor. So far (and having mostly used it for "normal" photography for now) I very much like it!

Before I can use it on satellites in Low Earth Orbit, I'll first have to complete a calibration program with the camera. This calibration entails the delay between the moment you press the shutter button and the exposure is actually taken; and the real duration of exposures (a "10 second" exposure is not exactly 10.00 seconds). I have some preliminary calibration results by now, but it will take some time before I have final results and can start to use the camera regularly on satellites. For geostationary satellites (where the timing accuracy isn't that much of a factor; rather the astrometry is) the preliminary results I have mean I can already use it (as has been done, see this post).

OT: Near Earth Asteroid 2012 LZ1 fly-by imaged, June 15

On June 10, 2012, Australian Siding Spring astronomer Rob McNaught and colleagues discovered a bright Near Earth Asteroid (NEA). It got the provisional designation 2012 LZ1 and turned out to be large: it is estimated to be about 500 meter in diameter (UPDATE 22 June 2012: radar observations from Arecibo obtained during the fly-by actually showed it to be twice as large, i.e. 1 km diameter! This suggests a low albedo, which might imply a carbonaceous composition). It made it's closest approach to the earth/moon system around midnight of June 14/15. With a pass distance of 5.3 million km (a multitude of the Earth-Moon distance), this flyby was not particularly close. But because the asteroid is large, it became quite bright, ~ mag. +13.

In the early morning of June 15, some 9 hours after closest approach, I used the "remote" 37-cm F/14 Cassegrain of UoI Rigel observatory at Sonoita, Arizona, USA (MPC 857, the same telescope that I often use to image geostationary satellites)  to image the asteroid (I also obtained some imagery using the larger 61-cm telescope of Sierra Stars Observatory in California).

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The image above is a stack of 4 CCD images, each of 30 second exposure and spaced 5 minutes in time, obtained with the Rigel telescope. The asteroid can be seen as a set of 4 short trails lining up. It was moving at a rate of about 35"/minute near the Aquila-Capricorn border at that time and was near mag. +13.

Visiting ESTEC for the #AndreTweetUp, an in-flight call with astronaut André Kuipers

On 29 May 2012, some 80 space and twitter enthusiasts gathered at the European Space Agency's (ESA) ESTEC center in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, for a "tweetup" called the #AndreTweetUp. This author was among them.

 AndreTweetUp attendants (photo: ESA)

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A "tweetup" is a gathering of twitter users. ESA organised the event around a live in-flight call with Dutch astronaut André Kuipers who is onboard the ISS. Eighty followers of the twitter acount of  André Kuipers were invited to attend, after a selection procedure that included the formulation of a question to Kuipers.

Ten of the 80 people present, actually got to ask that question during the live in-flight call . The event  included two lectures, a guided tour through the ESTEC facilities, and ended with the live video in-flight contact.

Dutch astronaut André Kuipers onboard the ISS live from space on the screen, and Swedish astronaut Christer Fuglesang in front of the screen moderating the live in-flight call (click image to enlarge)

For this author, who was among the lucky 80 to be invited (but alas not among the even more lucky 10 who got to ask their question to Kuipers), this kind of event was new. I jumped the twitter bandwagon late, a few months ago, and untill this #AndreTweetUp occasion, I had never heard of "tweetups".

So I had no idea what to expect. I half expected a hall full of Sheldon Coopers, dressed in Star-Trek costume, mumbling "fascinating!". Or 80 Wolowitzes, trying to hit on the ESA hostesses and talking about the space toilet they designed.

The reality was more benign. Indeed, there were a few people walking around wearing an astronaut's flight jacket covered in space-related patches (mind you: one of those actually was a genuine astronaut: ESA's Christer Fuglesang). And there were a couple of tweeps that seemed to build a life around this kind of events, recognizable by their paraphernalia that included custom t-shirts  and keychains with the words "tweetup" and "space" prominent and a mascotte in the form of a space-suit clad bear called Hughie:

Hughie

But all of these people turned out to be quite nice and normal! The evening before the event, I had a great time as part of an informal evening drink with a few of them (including but not limited to  @travelholic, @4tuneQkie, @DanielScuka and @rtimmermans) in "Einstein" in Leiden:

 Me (right) talking with ESA's Daniel Scuka (@danielscuka, left) about Space and Neandertals with Alex Neumann (@4tuneQkie, seen on back) listening, at the #spaceborrel in Einstein (Leiden) the evening before the tweetup (photo by Eico Neumann/@Travelholic)

You see: this almost looks like normal people! ;-)

Of course, this wouldn't do, so during the tweetup ESA had us all dressed in nerdy t-shirts with the ESA logo and "#AndreTweetUp" on it  ;-)

To bring in the Wolowitz factor, one of the things they let some of us do, was remotely move a robot arm on a future moon-rover located in a lab in Italy. Below is me, giving the command "move arm to left" (no word yet whether they got the rover out of the ditch again).

My Wolowitz moment: remotely moving a robot-arm on an ESA moonrover in a lab in Italy

The program was varied and started with a presentation by ESA's Walker including music videos that amongst others Elton John had made especially for this ISS mission. Walker told that by teaming up with Elton John, the amount of website hits on the ESA mission page increased a factor 2000!

  Tweeps and their laptops (for twittering) in the Erasmus hall

Next we had a very fine video presentation by one of the attendants, Remco Timmermans (@rtimmermans on Twitter), who had travelled to Baikonur to see the launch Soyuz TMA-03M blasting off Kuipers to the ISS.

We were then split-up for a guided tour through the ESTEC facilities, including a peek in the clean-labs (where alas photography was not allowed) and a 3D presentation where we got a virtual tour "trough" the ISS.

And of course, a notable number of the attendants duly tweeted all their experiences as the day progressed (photo shows a few of them listening to an explanation at the Russian Foton capsule, and tweeting about it):

The hall where we tweeps were settled, had enough to see too, as it included amongst others a life-size mockup of the European ISS module Columbus, a genuine Foton capsule and  the genuine Atmospheric Reentry Demonstrator (ARD) capsule, the only European capsule having been to space and then re-enter and land safely:

 Atmospheric Reentry Demonstrator (ARD). This capsule (it is the original) went to space and came back

Life-size Columbus module mock-up (multiple image stitch)

Russian Foton capsule (original)

Overview of the Erasmus hall, with mock-up Columbus module

Next Swedish astronaut Christer Fuglesang lectured us on his experiences with travelling to the ISS onboard a Space Shuttle, and introduced the very varied research done onboard the ISS:

ESA astronaut Christer Fuglesang, went to space twice

And then it was time for the big moment: the live in-flight video call with Dutch astronaut André Kuipers who is flying onboard the ISS as part of the PromISSe mission. The contact happened at 15:55 UTC (17:55 CEST) while the ISS was over the Galapagos and S-America, by means of a TDRS relay.

Here are some of the lucky 10 that got to ask their question lining up:

Even a "celebrity", soap-actress Babette van Veen (worldfamous in the whole of the Netherlands), got to ask a question (at ~6:15 in the video at the bottom of this post):

Below is a video showing parts of the in-flight call (as the memory card in my camera had filled up, I had no space left to film the complete in-flight call. I thought 8 Gb was enough, but no...).


It was fun and interesting to be present at this happening, and I wish to express a sincere "Thank you!" to the people of ESA and ESTEC for organizing this day!

Update on IGS 1B (10 June 2012)

We are slowly getting closer to the uncontrolled re-entry of the 1.2 tons malfunctioned Japanese spy satellite IGS 1B (2003-009B). The satellite's orbit has by now dropped below 340 km altitude (see second diagram below, perigee/apogee values from orbits calculated by Mike McCants based on amateur observations including mine). That is well below the ISS orbital altitude (ISS is currently in a 392 x 406 km altitude orbit). A mere month ago it was still considerably higher, in a 366 x 368 km orbit: it lost over 25 km or orbital altitude since. It is dropping fast, and the rate increases (see diagram below).

Using the latest amateur orbital elements for the object and Alan Pickup's SatEvo software with the current 10.7 cm solar flux, re-entry is currently estimated to occur between mid-July and early August 2012.

PAN is on the move, and detection of an unknown object in near-GEO

Last Wednesday evening (16 May) saw very clear skies. Combined with the absence of moonlight, an ideal situation to target geostationary objects, which are low in the sky for me at 52 N. As they are low  and I am in an urban environment, I need a very transparent sky.

Normally I use the 2.8/180mm Zeiss Sonnar, but this time I went for the SamYang 1.4/85mm. The limiting magnitude of this fine lens is only slightly less than that of the 180mm, but the FOV is twice as large (10 x 14 degrees). It is a geostationary magnet: in one single image I counted 20 geostationary or near-geostationary objects! In total, the session (a sweep of some 25 degrees of equatorial sky in the S-SE, at elevations of 15 to 25 degrees) recorded 38 objects: 7 classifieds, 30 unclassifieds and one unknown.


An UNKNOWN object on May 16

As part of the session, an object in near-Geostationary space was serendipitously observed that cannot be matched to any known object (for recorded positions, see here). It was slowly moving near the commercial geosats Eutelsat 36A and Eutelsat 36B (00-028A and 09-065A) and was captured on several images, small parts of four of which are shown below (note the movement relative to the stable Eutelsats):

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As Heavensat with the latest orbital catalogues loaded showed nothing in this position I initially logged it as a 'UNID'. Then a check with Ted's IDSat software resulted in a very superficial match with the DSP F20 cover (00-024E), but a clearly non-linear delta T suggested this could be a spurious match (see the questionmark and note under my data report here).  Next Mike McCants contacted me, it was indeed a spurious match in his opinion as his analysis of my data suggested an approximate orbit that does not match the DSP F20 cover at all. So for now, the object is designated as UNKNOWN 120516.

Objects like this do not spontaneously materialize, and there is no recent launch that can account for this object. It is therefore likely an old object being relocated. According to Mike, one possible (but by far not certain) option is that it is the classified object Mercury 1 (94-054A, or USA 105), which has not been observed for some time, being retired and relocated to a graveyard orbit.

Unfortunately, both Greg Roberts in South Africa and me here in the Netherlands were clouded out last night and today, so follow-up using Mike's approximate search orbits is troublesome for the moment.


PAN being relocated again

Another classified geostationary object on the move again is the enigmatic PAN (09-047A). This object has an unusual history of frequent relocations, moving to and fro in longitude each few months. It was at 44.9 E in the spring of 2011, then relocated to 39.1 E in the summer of 2011 and next moved to 52.5 E somewhere between late October 2011 (I still observed it at 39.1E on 23 October 2011) and January 2012, when Greg Roberts noted it missing after which Ian Roberts recovered it at 52.5 E early February.

And now its is moving again: Greg Roberts was the first to note this on May 10 and recovered it on May 14 and May 16 while it was and is moving towards 39.1 E (a position it has previously occupied). I imaged it near 39.1 E too on Wednesday evening May 16. Below is a part of one of the images, showing PAN and several commercial geostationary objects, as well as two old rocket boosters in GTO:

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 Other classified (near-)  geostationary objects observed this evening were the SIGINT Vortex 6 (89-035A, also in the process of being relocated), the SIGINT Mentor 4 (09-001A), it's rocket (09-001B), the Milstar 5 communication satellite (02-001A), the DSCS 3-13 R2 rocket (03-008C) and the DSP early-warning satellite DSP F23 (07-054A).

Apart from these geostationary objects, I observed the LEO object USA 186 (05-042A, a KH-12 Keyhole) as well that evening, in its new orbit after it manoeuvered earlier this year.

Voice reception (radio) of Soyuz TMA-04M bringing crew 31 to the ISS

On May 15 the Soyuz TMA-04M spacecraft was launched from Baikonur, bringing a fresh crew (crew 31) of Kosmonauts to the International Space Station.



At 09:04 UTC (11:04 am local time) this morning (May 16), it passed over Leiden. Using my old scanner radio (Realistic Pro-2042) and a homebrew dipole antenna, I listened in on 121.75 MHz as the Soyuz crew was talking (in Russian) to groundcontrol in Russia. Above is a 54 second record with the best part of the reception, starting at 09:03:40 UTC.

IGS 1B on 12 and 13 May

After a month of generally bad weather conditions, two clear evenings allowed to track IGS 1B (2003-009B) again, the malfunctioned Japanese spy satellite that will have an uncontrolled reentry this summer.

Below video shows footage from both evenings: it opens with May 12 footage of IGS 1B crossing through Bootes and Corona Borealis (25 mm lens), and next shows footage of May 13 showing it moving through Leo and Uma (9 mm wide angle lens)




The photograph below was shot in the evening of May 13 using the EF 2.0/35mm lens, showing IGS in Leo over the roof of my house:

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Other objects tracked include the IGS 5 r/b (09-066B). I also obtained remote telescopic imagery of Prowler (90-097E) using the 37-cm Rigel telescope in Sonoita, Arizona.

An update on IGS 1B - a spy satellite about to reenter this summer

(updated reentry prediction at the end of this post)

Last year I wrote extensively about the malfunctioned Japanese spy satellite IGS 1B (2003-009B) which is about to reenter, uncontrolled, into the atmosphere soon. The above footage of the object was shot by me last April 13 and 14 and shows two passes over Leiden.

This radar satellite, launched to keep an eye on North-Korea in 2003, malfunctioned in March 2007, halfway though its mission. Since then, it has been steadily coming down (see diagrams below) in a way that clearly shows that the satellite operators do no longer have control over it.

Last year, I pointed to the fact that the 1.2 tons  satellite will reenter in 2012 (so this year), and likely still has some remnant fuel onboard. A subsequent assessment by high-end amateur satellite tracker Ted Molczan showed that this amount of fuel is limited - probably about 14 to 50 kg, an order of a magnitude less than the infamous case of USA 193 in 2008. This assessment is important, as an uncontrolled reentry of a satellite with fuel onboard is a potential hazard (reason why I wrote about it last year) and authorities were (and are) very quiet about it. Ted's assessment, the only public one to date, helped to put the potential risks involved into proper context.

In the autumn of 2011 we temporarily lost track of IGS 1B because it entered winter invisibility for the Northern hemisphere (where most of our observers are located). Early April this year, it emerged from this winter blackout again. I did a failed attempt to recover it on the evening of April 2, and then Russell Eberst successfully recovered it a day later on the evening of April 3. Since then, I observed it on April 13, 14 and 22 (see video footage above of the April 13 and 14 passes) and other amateurs have observed it as well.

Below is a 35-second integration of video frames from the April 13 video (upper right are tail stars of the Big Dipper):

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Orbital evolution over the winter blackout

When IGS 1B was lost in the winter blackout in the autumn of 2011, it was in a 453 x 455 km orbit. Since then, it has come down considerably: as of 2012 May 1 it is in a 366 x 368 km orbit, almost 100 km lower (and now below the orbital altitude of the ISS). It is coming down at an increasingly fast speed, as the diagrams below show (based on orbital calculations by Mike McCants, derived from amateur observations which include my observations):

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Current Decay Prediction

Using Alan Pickup's SatEvo software with the current orbit and solar activity, I expect the reentry of IGS 1B to occur somewhere during a window that spans from June until August. As the orbit is evolving fast, it is pertinent that we keep close track of the object in order not to lose it (a few days old elements already results in several minutes uncertainty in pass time).