Imaging Navigation Satellites

All of us have used Navigation Satellites, whether you realise it or not. Our modern western world can no longer function well without them. But it is a challenge to actually see them in the sky. In Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) at altitudes of ~20 000 km, they stay faint.

Four large constellations of Navigation satellites currently exist. The best known is the US GPS system (aka NAVSTAR). But there is also the European GALILEO system; the Chinese BEIDOU system; and the Russian GLONASS system. Together, they are often referred to as the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS).

In the evening of 6 November 2023, when the sky over Leiden was very clear, I by chance imaged examples of all four systems, largely within the same small part of the sky, while surveying for HEO objects. Here are some images, one each for each GNSS system (the images were made with a ZWO ASI 6200MM PRO camera and 1.2/85 mm lens, 10-second exposures):

 

NAVSTAR 73 (GPS)

 

GALILEO 21

 

BEIDOU 3M7

KOSMOS 2501 (GLONASS)

USA 224 recovered, USA 186 still drifting, and looking for GPS IIF-6 20 minutes after launch

For various reasons, I am a bit late in keeping the reader up to what is happening to the KH-11 Keyhole/CRYSTAL system of optical reconnaissance satellites.

USA 186 (2005-042A), the secondary West plane KH-11, is still in a non sun-synchronous orbit and hence still drifting westwards. It is drifting for over half a year now. The difference in RAAN with USA 245, the primary West plane KH-11, is now over 20 degrees (21.8 degrees on May 19th). I am very curious as to when the drifting will stop, if ever. If it continues to drift for many weeks to come, we should contemplate whether perhaps the satellite is "dead", i.e. has lost manoeuverability. Problem is that NW European observers temporarily have lost visibility of the satellite, due to the current short nights. Tracking all comes down now to observers in the US and southern Europe.

Meanwhile, Russell Eberst in Scotland recovered USA 224 (2011-002A), the primary East plane KH-11, on May 9th. It is in a 260 x 1006 km orbit, which means it has slightly lowered its apogee. Before the winter blackout it was in a 258 x 1023 km orbit. The difference in RAAN with USA 245, the primary West plane KH-11, is now 48.5 degrees.

My own first observation of USA 224 was in the night of May 16-17. The image below shows it crossing through Corona borealis:

click image to enlarge

USA 161 (2001-044A), the secondary East plane KH-11, has still not emerged out of the winter blackout. Meanwhile, USA 129 (1996-072A) has gone missing since April 24 (see a previous post). There is a good chance it has been de-orbitted.

The current KH-11 constellation now looks like this (where the current orbital configuration of USA 161, in red, is uncertain, and USA 129 left out as it is no longer in its old orbit, and presumed de-orbitted):

click images to enlarge

In the early morning of May 17 (evening of May 16 in the US) and after a one day delay due to bad weather, a new GPS satellite, GPS II-F6 was launched from Cape Canaveral on a Delta IV rocket. It would pass over the Netherlands some 20 minutes after launch, still ascending and still attached to the 2nd stage. A number of search orbit had been published, but it looks like none of these was very accurate. I visually observed a bright UNID near 00:24:00 UT (May 17) moving just a few degrees to the 'right' of Altair on a trajectory parallel to the predicted ones but some 20 degrees cross-track in a southern direction. It was already descending over the roof when I picked it up, so I had no time to snap a picture alas. It did not match any known object so I am quite confident it was GPS II F-6 on its way to orbit. It was bright, about mag +1 to 0.

Mystery object in Alaska sky night Feb 20-21 was a fuel vent connected to the USA 248 (GPS 2F-05) launch

Yesterday an intriguing photo shot  from Pedro Dome near Fairbanks, Alaska (USA) by Dennis Mammana appeared on the Spaceweather.com website. It showed a butterfly-like cloud in the starry sky, in the Pegasus square. The image can be seen here (scroll down a bit) and was taken near 6:15 UT on February 21, 2014, from a location near 65.04 N, 147.457 W.

The cloud. Image (c) by Dennis Mammana,
reproduced with permission

The cloud looks very much like a satellite or rocket booster fuel vent. But what satellite/rocket was responsible? Early suspicion was that it could be connected to the launch of a new GPS Navstar satellite, USA 248/Navstar 2F-05 (2014-008A) from Cape Canaveral a few hours earlier.

Upon seeing the image and checking a few things, I could quickly confirm that this indeed was a fuel vent related to this launch.

The satellite was launched near 01:59 UT on Feb 21 (evening of Feb 20 local time in the USA) from Cape Canaveral in Florida using a Delta IV medium rocket. It separated from the second (final) rocket stage 3h 33m 05s after lift-off, i.e. around 5:32 UT (Feb 21) while coasting just east of Hainan, China. This was some 43 minutes before the observations from Alaska by Dennis Mammana.

Upon separation the satellite was placed in a 54.98 degree inclined orbit at an average altitude of 20470 km. The rocket stage moves in a quite similar orbit.

At the time of Mammana's observation, barely 45 minutes after separation, the satellite and rocket stage were still close together (they were only some 30 km separate in space) coasting over Beijing, China, at an altitude of 20 482 km and moving northwards. As seen from Pedro Dome in Alaska the two objects were within a few arcminutes of each other low in the Western sky, at a range of 24 300 km to the observer.

click map to enlarge

click images to enlarge

The rocket stage and the GPS satellite's sky positions agree closely to the position of the butterfly cloud photographed by Mammana (compare the map below with Mammana's photograph).
  

click map to enlarge

click image to enlarge. Image (c) by Dennis Mammana,
reproduced with permission

As seen from Pedro Dome, Alaska, the rocket stage was at an elevation of 17 degrees almost due West in the sky (az 290 degrees) at 6:15 UT (Feb 21), near RA 23h44m57s, dec. +23 47'. This is in the square of Pegasus, indicated with red lines in the map above. The satellite was near RA 23h44m26s, dec. +23 43'. This is based on Space-Track elements for epoch 14052.70 (Feb 21.70 UT) for the rocket stage and epoch 14052.27 (Feb 21.27 UT)  for the satellite.

For the object on Mammana's images I measure (with an accuracy no better than 1 arc-minute due to limited resolution of the published image) RA 23h 44m, dec +23 42' (2000.0) using AstroRecord and the image posted on Spaceweather.com.

Object             RA         Dec
Mammana cloud *    23h 44m   +23 42'  meas.
Satellite          23h 44m   +23 43'  pred.
Rocket stage       23h 45m   +23 47'  pred.

These positions are within arcminutes of each other. The position I measure for the approximate center of the butterfly cloud has a smallest miss-distance to the track of USA 248 of only 0.13 degree. These are values so close (particularly giving the measurement uncertainties and epoch differences) that the identification with a fuel vent from the GPS launch can be put forward with strong confidence.

Update: a second image by an observer in Canada, David Cartier, has now appeared (with thanks to Tony Philips for pointing me to it).

I thank Dennis Mammana for his permission to reproduce his photographs.

A flashing GPS satellite (Navstar 39, USA 128)

This blog's readers will be familiar with the Global Positioning System (GPS). These US navigational satellites provide us with navigational aid, whether you are on a boat, aircraft, in a vehicle, hiking, or just using your cellphone. Our modern world would be nowhere without them.

But have you ever seen a GPS satellite?

click image to enlarge

In the evening of June 25 I by chance captured one of the 41 operational a GPS satellite that was decommisioned last year on photograph: Navstar 39 (USA 128, GPS 2A-27, 1996-056A). It showed up as a very bright small trail  and was flashing at a rate of  2-3 flashes per 10 seconds. Above is a compilation of the photographs taken (Canon EOS 60D with Samyang 1.4/85mm lens).

GPS satellites do not usually get this bright: the satellite was evidently flaring due to a favourable sun-satellite-observer line-up. As this is a decommisioned satellite, the flashing could be due (I am not sure) to the satellite having lost attitude control and being spinning.