[amsat-bb] Re: Can we get them to fix AO-40 first then?

[Samudra Haque]

Has there been any serious attempt to take a photograph of the damaged
bird using ground based optical telescopes while it is in sunlight ?
With modern telescopes such as
http://www.refractortelescopes.co.uk/reviews/orion/orion-shorttube-80-a-refractor-telescope/
or similiar and a modern digital camera and a known RA/DEC co-ordinate
of the satellite at any point in its orbit, it should be possible get
a fairly decent picture of what is still up there...

Note RA / DEC are astronomy co-ordinates which should be able to be
calculated from AZ/EL or TLE, but I may not be able to do it myself.

We don't need to track it, but just to image it in several consecutive
frames. From: http://www.emergentspace.com/pubs/AIAA_GNC_2002_AMSAT_A040.pdf

Table 1. Nominal Orbit Parameters for AO-40
Orbit Parameter Value
Semimajor Axis (km) 36,245
Perigee Height (km) 1,042
Apogee Height (km) 58,691
Eccentricity 0.797
Inclination (deg) 6.04
Period (hours) 19.1


On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 9:49 PM, Rocky Jones <orbitjet at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think both those things are accurate.
>
> Robert WB5MZO
>
>> Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:31:30 -0400
>> From: mat_62 at netcommander.com
>> To: amsat-bb at amsat.org
>> Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: Can we get them to fix AO-40 first then?
>>
>> I guess I need to go back and read the archives because what I remember
>> reading didn't give me any hope AO-40 would ever be back. Wasn't there
>> something about that they believed the spacecraft was leaking corrosive
>> fuel? Doesn't sound to conducive to any type of recovery of anything
>> where electronics are involved.. I also thought there was talk of a
>> "catastrophic explosion".
>> Michael, W4HIJ
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