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

[Nico Janssen]

It is confirmed from China that LongJiang 2 has performed a
successful braking maneuver, so that it is now in lunar orbit.
No further details yet.

73, Nico

On 25-05-18 15:53, Nico Janssen wrote:
> 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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>
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