From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!eagle!karn Newsgroups: net.ham-radio Title: Amsat news from 3850 Khz net Article-I.D.: eagle.309 Posted: Tue May 18 23:27:55 1982 Received: Thu May 20 02:02:51 1982 More information on the new Soviet amateur radio satellite, from the regular Tuesday night Amsat net, 9pm EST on 3850 Khz: Keplerian element set #43 for Salyut-7, catalog number 13138: Epoch: 1982 135.23118989 Mean anomaly at epoch: 55.8167 degrees Inclination: 51.5941 degrees Eccentricity: .0002452 Mean motion: 15.75128484 rev/day (a VERY low orbit!) Drag factor: .0003028 rev/day^2 (an order of magnitude worse than Uosat) Arg of perigee: 304.2741 deg Right ascension of ascending node: 20.6840 deg Epoch rev number: 403 >From these numbers, the period is 91.345922 minutes, the apogee is 346km and the perigee is 343km. Because the orbit is so low, it will be difficult to predict long periods in advance. It will probably have a very short orbital lifetime. For at least a while, these elements should be a close approximation to the orbit of the amateur sub-satellite. Depending on how hard the cosmonauts kicked the spacecraft out the door, the two spacecraft orbits will diverge slowly or rapidly with time. It is believed that the spacecraft carries a transponder with a 21 mhz (15 meter) input and a 29 mhz (10 meter) output. If so, this is the first time the 15 meter band has been used for such a purpose. The beacon on 29.578 Mhz has been received by a number of stations and is quite strong. In other news, Uosat is still in trouble. Both beacons are still locked on, densensing the command receivers. Attempts at both 2m and 70cm moonbounce stations to command the beacons OFF have not yet been successful, although attempts are being continued. ESA has set a launch date for Phase III-B in January, 1983, aboard Ariane L7. The primary passenger will still be ECS-1; problems with the design of ECS-1 has been the cause of the delay. The phase-IIIB spacecraft itself is nearing completion, as the transponders will be arriving from Germany this week. The spacecraft will start environmental testing within the next several weeks. Phil Karn, KA9Q