From: John Pike (johnpike@fas.org)
Subject: Re: AFP-731 / 1990-019B / NORAD-20516 Where Are You?
Newsgroups: sci.astro, sci.space.policy, alt.politics.org.cia, alt.war
Date: 1995/08/15
thomsona@netcom.com (Allen Thomson) wrote:
>This relates to a point that I've been curious about:
^^^^^
an interesting "feature" of Netscape
>If we take Ted Molczan's "The Saga of USA 53 - Found, Lost, Found Again
>and Lost Again" summary in his N2L files (available from >
ftp://kilroy.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/space/elements/molczan
The URL will be unbroken, by and by, by and by
Ted also gave me permission to pass along this email
everything below this line is from him
----------------------------------------------------
From: Ted Molczan
To: johnpike
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 02:13:16 -0400
Content-Length: 3646
Further to our discussion, and your e-mail, I have made a quick review
of Major Doda's article (provided to me by Allen Thomson, along with his
partial translation), and found (refreshed my memory) that *two* of the
sats that were plotted, were identified in the map's legend as "KH-11 M".
Those were in addition to the 3 known KH-11 sats. In mid-Jan'91 there
were only three sats (that come to mind) that I can imagine the Russians
identifying as a KH-11 variant:
89061B - the first of the shuttle-launched Molniya-orbit payloads
90019B - the shuttle-launched KH-11-like object
90059A - the primary payload of the first Titan IV high-inclination
launch.
The first of these might sound laughable, but I recall seeing or
hearing of another Russian list in which it was identified either
as a an advanced '11, or at least an imager. Perhaps they were
influenced by Western news reports.
In any case, we have two as yet unidentified objects to sort out from
Major Doda's article. The main map, which is for 17 Jan'91, shows
tracks for the following objects:
F-5 KH 9-17 ELINT
F-8 USA 32
F-11 KH 9-19 ELINT
N-6 KH 11-7
N-7 KH 11-6
N-9 KH 11-8
N-12
N-13
L-10 Lacrosse 1
The letter-number ID's are the english translations of the codes
on the map. The names to their right are my names for the objects
which I was able to match to the ground-tracks on the map. I wonder
whether or not those rather old KH-9 piggy-backed ferrets were still
operational during Desert Storm. Amateur radio satellite sleuths
monitored an even older KH-9 ferret's carrier signalduring the second
half of 1989, so I guess it is possible the latter ones survived into
the '90s. The Russians seemed to have believed that was the case.
N-12 and N-13 are the KH-11 M's I referred to earlier. Their tracks
are consistent with approximately 60 deg inc orbits. Of course, if
they were at a very high altitude, Earth rotation would play a much
greater role in shaping the track than if they were in LEO. The
article seems to refer to N-12 as the "KH-ll M" and N-13 as the
"second KH-11 M".
In addition to the map, Allen Thomson was able to translate some
text describing passes on "23 Feb 93" (I think Allen meant 1990!). The
descriptions are rather broad, but they could further help constrain
the solution.
Also, we have some basic physics to help constrain the solution:
the last known orbits of 89061B, 90019B and 90059A. Our best
data is for 90019B and 90059A. For the former we have an excellent
orbit, less than 90 days before the date of the map. In this time,
its orbital plane could not have precessed even once around the
Earth. A higher orbit would precess even more slowly. For 90019B
to have been N-13, it would have had to enter a significantly
*higher* orbit around the time it disappeared in early Nov 90. Also,
the final one or two obs indicated the orbital altitude had 90019B
had slighgtly increased its altitude. All this fits your theory;
now I must iron out the details.
One concern I have is that I have found one serious error in Doda's
map - he mislabelled (swapped) the times of the two Lacrosse tracks,
both on the map and in his text description. Could this be disinfo?
I can't think of a motive for that type of disinfo, so I lean toward
simple error. I sure hope there are no errors in N-12 and 13's tracks
and labels.
I have resumed my analysis of this problem, but it will take a
while to complete, due to my rather limited spare time. I will keep
you informed of my progress and findings.
