Post a Comment On: SatTrackCam Leiden (b)log

In my previous post I reported that the geosynchronous payload of June 11th's NROL-37 launch, the SIGINT satellite Mentor 7 (USA 268, 2016-036A) was found on June 14 by Paul Camilleri in Australia.

Paul has communicated new observations from June 15 and 16, extending the observational arc to 2.1 days. I fit the following updated orbit to it:

Mentor 7
1 41584U 16036A   16167.96105997 0.00000000  00000-0  00000+0 0    07
2 41584   7.5055 353.7008 0046333  41.2140 319.1375  1.00195548    05

rms 0.004 deg      from 9 obs June 14.70 - June 16.79  (2.09 day arc)

This orbit results in a drift rate of ~0.28 degrees per day in longitude, westwards. If this drift rate does not change in the future, the satellite will reach longitude 80 E (my guess for its eventual operational position) at the end of the first week of September 2016 [update 27 June: but see follow-on post here].

More on Mentor 7 and its recovery (including one of Paul's recovery images) in my previous post.

UPDATE 27 June 2016: Mentor 7 has stopped drifting and is stable at longitude 102.6 E - more on that in this follow-on post.