[amsat-bb] LongJiang 1 & 2 arrive at the Moon

[Nico Janssen]

Jordan,

Yes, you should see a sudden change in the doppler curve. And that
would be a welcome confirmation of a successful maneuver.

If you also can receive the LJ 1 S band downlink it would be extra
interesting to see what happens to that signal.

73, Nico

On 25-05-18 15:47, Jordan Trewitt wrote:
> If we have our S band antennas pointed up there, shouldn't we be able 
> to see the braking maneuver with the Doppler shift? Assuming the moon 
> (or Earth) doesn't block the signals.
> -Jordan
> KF5COQ
>
> On Fri, May 25, 2018 at 8:22 AM Nico Janssen <hamsat at xs4all.nl 
> <mailto:hamsat at xs4all.nl>> wrote:
>
>
>     The Chinese microsats LongJiang 1 & 2 have arrived at the Moon.
>     On 2018-05-25 between 14:00 and 15:00 UTC they are expected to pass
>     the Moon at a distance of about 300 km. At that time they should
>     perform a braking maneuver so that they can enter a high elliptical
>     300 x 9000 km orbit around the Moon. The planned orbit inclination
>     is unknown.
>
>     Unfortunately there is virtually no information on these satellites
>     coming from China. It is not clear if LJ 1 is recovered. Telemetry is
>     being received from the S band downlink of LJ 2 at 2275.22 MHz.
>     All other information, including recent orbital data, is missing.
>
>     Note that the usual satellite tracking programs and regular TLE
>     data can not be used for tracking satellites near the Moon. You
>     really need specific deep space tracking software and orbital
>     elements. TLE sets for the LongJiangs that were published earlier
>     have no value at all now that these satellites are in the vicinity of
>     the Moon. Again I would like to refer to my web page on this
>     subject:
>     https://hamsat1.home.xs4all.nl/index.html
>
>     73,
>     Nico PA0DLO
>
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