A so far unidentified object in GEO near PAN and Eutelsat Hot Bird 13B [UPDATED]

PAN on March 4, 2024 (click image to enlarge)

UNID near PAN on March 8, 2024 (click image to enlarge)

In the evening of March 8 I did some observations to check upon the drifting PAN/NEMESIS-1 satellite. To my surprise, there was another object there that is not in the current catalogue (as of 10 March 2024). It wasn't there yet when I imaged the area 4 days earlier, in the evening of March 4, as can be seen by comparing the two images above.

Most likely this UNID is some commercial geosynchronous satellite that has been relocated without the 18th STS having caught that move yet. But it could also be something new. For now, it remains unidentified.

The UNID is located at about 33.8 E longitude. A very provisional elset:

UNID ML080324
1 99999U 24000X   24068.68698391 0.00000000  00000-0  00000-0 0    03
2 99999   0.0001  87.9800 0002372 229.7255 130.2564  1.00270000    07

The object could perhaps be the newly launched Chinese satellite WHG-01 (2024-040A). It was launched from Xichang a week ago, on 29 February 2024. Currently (March 11, 2024), only an 8-day old GTO elset is available for the object. That elset combined with the elset for the UNID above suggests that the satellite could have been inserted into GEO at 33.8 E on March 6 near 11 UTC.

Over the half hour arc that I imaged it on March 8, the UNID remained stationary. 

PAN/NEMESIS-1 is meanwhile slowly drifting west (the drift can be seen in the images above too, by comparing the distance of PAN/NEMESIS-1 to EUTELSAT HOT BIRD B13), as it has been doing for quite a while now. On 2024 March 8 it was near longitude 33.45 E. It is currently drifting at a rate of approximately -0.03 degrees per day.

 

PAN longitude of subsatellite point over time (click diagram to enlarge)

NOTE: an initial mix-up of the names of two recently launched Chinese GEO sats was corrected.

 

UPDATE 14 March 2024:

Space-Track, since yesterday (first non-GTO TLE has epoch 24073.71736125 = 13 March 2024 17:13 UTC), finally also places an object  in this position, catalogue nr 59069, COSPAR 2024-040A. Provisionally named "Object A", but the Cospar code indicates this would indeed be the Chinese satellite WHG-01.

Recovering USA 310, PAN and Trumpet 2

 

click image to enlarge

Our coverage of classified objects in high altitude orbits has been waning over the past few years. In February, I made a first attempt to recover some. In the past two weeks, I again recovered a number of these objects, as a by product of testing a ZWO ASI6200MM camera (that ultimately is going to be installed on the roof of the Delft Technical University Aerospace faculty).

One of the objects I recovered, is a very unusual one: USA 310 (2020-083A). This object is in an odd 58.5 degree inclined, 11097 x 11074 km MEO orbit. It was launched on 13 November 2020 as NROL-101 (see this 2020 blogpost). We tracked it and it's Centaur upper stage for a couple of weeks, but lost it after February 2021. In other words: it had not been seen for the last 2.5 years!

That is, untill I serendipitously picked it up last August 22, while imaging geostationary satellites. In the imagery, a streak was encountered (see image above). It is a fit with USA 310. I managed to track it again during several nights the past two weeks. Frankly, I am not 100% sure whether it is USA 310 or the Centaur upper stage from that launch, but it does not seem to have the periodic brightness variation the Centaur upper stage showed in 2020/2021. And it is (relatively) bright only in the eastern part of the sky, just like USA 310 back in 2020/2021.

More objects were recovered. Several geosynchronous objects that hadn't been observed for a while, were imaged. One of them, the enigmatic PAN (2009-047A), had moved (just as it used to frequently do in the past, see my in-depth article on PAN in The Space Review from October 2016). I recovered it at longitude 39.7 degrees East, in the vicinity of Express AM-7. Observations over the past two week show it is stationkeeping, so it appears to be still operational (see also this post from 2021, when after several years of being stable at 47.7 E, it started to drift). Below is the recovery image:

click image to enlarge

Coverage of high altitude objects in HEO has likewise become spotty. I observed a number of them late February (see this blogpost), and again did so the past two weeks (a.o. TRUMPET 1 and USA 278). I recovered the SIGINT satellite TRUMPET-2 (1995-034A) on September 5, which had not been seen for almost 2 years:

 

One reason why I only sporadically track objects in GEO and HEO is that identifying and measuring them is much more labour-intensive than video-tracking objects in Low Earth Orbit, as identifying and measuring is still done manually for these objects by me. One day, I should get myself some software to make this a more easy task...

Checking up on high-altitude objects

USA 200 (2008-010A) in HEO on 28 Feb 2023. Click image to enlarge

 

Only a few observers in our network are observing high altitude objects - objects in MEO, HEO and GEO. This is especially the case for HEO objects.

Due to various reasons, my own tracking of these objects over the past year had lapsed as well. But a series of bright clear nights late February, allowed me to pick up on them again. I recovered a number of objects that had not been observed by our network for over a year. USA 200 (2008-010A), in the image above from Feb 28, is one of them. I recovered it on Feb 28 after it had not been observed for almost exactly one year.

Below are a few more (but not all) objects that I observed late February that hadn't been tracked for a long time. All objects were imaged with a Canon EOS 80D + Samyang 2.0/135 mm lens.

USA 179 (2004-034A) in HEO on 26 Feb 2023. Click image to enlarge

USA 269 (2016-047A) in GEO (click image to enlarge)

USA 278 (2017-056A) in HEO. Click image to enlarge