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<p>Just saw this on Twitter.</p>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1007753856497999872">https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1007753856497999872</a></p>
<p>Ron W6RZ<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 06/15/2018 04:23 PM, Zach Leffke via
Ground-Station wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:066982ab-d859-925d-62b6-ee5c13f50a85@vt.edu">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<pre style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">SPACEBEE-1
1 43142U 18004AH 18166.15327463 .00002710 00000-0 11662-3 0 9999
2 43142 97.5349 228.9583 0011111 108.5240 251.7204 15.23458854 23400
SPACEBEE-2
1 43141U 18004AG 18165.89385312 .00002518 00000-0 10875-3 0 9996
2 43141 97.5348 228.6883 0011116 109.0700 251.1741 15.23396885 23371
SPACEBEE-3
1 43140U 18004AF 18165.89660685 .00002409 00000-0 10436-3 0 9996
2 43140 97.5347 228.6832 0011129 108.9142 251.3301 15.23343657 23378
SPACEBEE-4
1 43139U 18004AE 18166.16700625 .00001921 00000-0 84210-4 0 9994
2 43139 97.5347 228.9332 0011117 107.4719 252.7733 15.23190279 23403</pre>
<p>TLE source: Celestrak.com, also on N2YO's webpage.<br>
</p>
<p>Not trying to be argumentative here, truly am confused about
whats going on.....hoping someone in the know can school me.<br>
</p>
<p>To me it appears they are reliably tracking all four
individually. Epochs updated yesterday/today (if I did the
Julian conversion right), and I've been loosely following this
and have never seen 'stale' updates. These TLEs (NORAD IDs)
were in the catalog very early in the post launch deployment
(within first two weeks for sure, I have a TLE matching project
based off Doppler curves, done for Fox-1D that was on the same
vehicle, and have the early TLEs saved off on github and the
individual spacebees are in there!). This implies that they
were quickly resolved in the sea of 30+ satellites deployed in
300 seconds (or there about). <br>
</p>
<p>Not saying they should have been launched without their
licensing in place, but clearly (to me, could be wrong here) the
original grounds for the FCC denial was flat out wrong, like
Howie said.<br>
</p>
<p>So maybe their response would be "sure, we can track <i>four</i>....".
OK, well......what's your upper limit? A denial of 'sorry we
can only routinely track 20, and there are currently 20 up
there, so you have to wait for the technology to improve or
something to decay' would really suck, but at least it would be
clear.........<br>
</p>
<p>My take on this issue is that if there is a minimum size
requirement (maybe orbital altitude is a factor as well here, so
maybe 'desired altitude + size requirement') from
FCC/JSpOC/NASA/Whoever, that is not clearly stated in any
application requirements, so how were they (or anyone else for
that matter) to know that would be an issue in the first place.
We have an interest in the ThinSat design at VT. We are
launching ThinSat derived designs on a suborbital sounding
rocket very soon (not an issue for orbit tracking, but that
program is supposed to be traceable to orbital spaceflight), I
know that a High School in Southwest VA is launching some very
soon (they got approval), though they will be VERY low altitude
(one - two week lifetime) and we have recently started a
possible collaboration with VMI who is intending to launch some
in the next year or so (haven't begun filing process).........so
what is the requirement?<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>So what is the technical challenge here? I understand that
higher frequency radars (Ka band I think?) are needed to track
these smaller objects, and that there are fewer of those. But
the TLEs keep getting updated......so is this a question of
scheduling and because this is a hot topic they have bumped them
up in the priority queue? Is some piece of Iridium 33 / COSMOS
2251 not being tracked to make room for these guys and they are
worried about over burdening the radars? Again,
understandable.......but they are not being clear and consistent
in the requirement, which just causes more confusion......</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Again, not trying to defend the company who went against FCC
decisions, but the fundamental grounds for the denial is at best
incomplete, at worst, just straight up wrong......<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>-Zach, KJ4QLP<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">Research Associate
Aerospace Systems Lab
Ted & Karyn Hume Center for National Security & Technology
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
Work Phone: 540-231-4174
Cell Phone: 540-808-6305</pre>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 6/15/2018 6:21 PM, Bruce Perens
via Ground-Station wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAK2MWOtxtHB6Gz4PF1zHF1UaOGh=vHHrH_kxrr+kKSUQXEqgUQ@mail.gmail.com">
<div dir="ltr">I will note that, but I suspect their answer is
going to be "sure, we can track <i>one".</i>
<div><i><br>
</i></div>
<div><i> </i>Thanks</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div> Bruce</div>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Jun 15, 2018 at 12:53 PM,
Howie DeFelice <span dir="ltr"><<a
href="mailto:howied231@hotmail.com" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">howied231@hotmail.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">
<div style="font-family:"Franklin Gothic
Demi","Avenir Next Condensed Demi
Bold",sans-serif;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0)">
The FCC statement about "Trackability" and that Jspoc
cannot routinely track objects smaller than 10cm is
just not true. $50sat (aka Eagle2) was launched in
2013 into a 700 km sun synchronous orbit. The
dimensions of that satellite were 5cm x 5cm x 7.5 cm
and updates from Jspoc were routinely published until
the satellite re-entered a few weeks ago. This is the
satellite referred to in note 25 of the NPRM, comment
by Alba Orbital.</div>
<div style="font-family:"Franklin Gothic
Demi","Avenir Next Condensed Demi
Bold",sans-serif;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0)">
<br>
</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li style="font-family:"franklin gothic
demi","avenir next condensed demi
bold",sans-serif;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0)">
<font face="Franklin Gothic Demi, Avenir Next
Condensed Demi Bold, sans-serif" color="#000000">Howie
AB2s</font></li>
</ul>
</div>
<hr style="display:inline-block;width:98%"><br>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
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