Beep, Beep, Beep!

By Aaron B. Clevenson, ALCor

“Space, the final frontier.”
- Captain James T. Kirk

Now for a close look at a program that our grandparents couldn’t have done: the Earth Orbiting Satellite Club, the thirteenth article in our AL Certification series. Let’s start with a trivia question (the answer is at the bottom – no peaking).

“What was born on October 4, 1957 (I was two years old), weighed 184 pounds, and only lived for 21 days?”

Now for the club… The Earth Orbiting Satellite Club is fairly new. No equipment is required, but access to the Internet is critical. The website you want to access is www.Heavens-Above.com. The purpose of this club is to provide a familiarization with the many different satellites that are orbiting the Earth. The requirements are varied and timing is the most important part. Each observation may only be used for one requirement.

Here is what you need to observe and document: 4 different active payloads, 2 different manned space vehicles (tough right now), satellites from 4 different countries, 4 different rocket bodies, 4 Iridium Flares (1 in daylight), 2 double passes of a satellite, 2 formation flights, and 2 satellites with aged elsets.

Sounds pretty easy to me. Well, not so. The trick to a double pass for a satellite is to find a very bright one that happens to pass on the same night. This means your best bets are the ISS and HST, since they are very bright. It helps to use binoculars for fainter objects. Formation flights are tough too. The best one would be a shuttle near docking with the ISS. Unfortunately this doesn’t happen too often, and I have never seen one that met the requirements. Fortunately there are some other satellites that will work for this requirement. I used the NOSS 2-2 (C), (D), and (E) satellites (naval reconnaissance) and there are others too. The aged elset requirement can be tough a well. You need to get data for passes for a satellite a few weeks or months before the pass, and then also the day of the pass. You then need to observe that the satellite was not where and when it should have been. Of course that means that the weather must cooperate too. I recommend that you plan for a number of opportunities, and hope for the best.

That’s it, piece of cake. Good luck. Now for the answer to the trivia question… The answer is – Sputnik 1, the very first man-made artificial earth orbiting satellite. It was the first of four satellites launched by the Russians that started the Space Race. The third one was destroyed immediately after take-off. To hear the sounds of Sputnik 1, try: http://fiftiesweb.com/pop/sputnik.wav.

Join us again next month for a trip with Hans Solo through an asteroid field: The Asteroid Observers Club.