Kosmos 2462 / Soyuz-U - 16 April 2010

[ostangen]

Zvezda launch report

http://zvezdanews.ru/video/day_events/0041045/

[Zipi]

Short launch video clip:

[ostangen]

According to user at novosti-kosmonavtik forum the satellite did an de-orbit burn on the 18 juli, and has likely returned to earth.

http://www.novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10724&start=60

[Phillip Clark]

According to user at novosti-kosmonavtik forum the satellite did an de-orbit burn on the 18 juli, and has likely returned to earth.

http://www.novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10724&start=60

If the above is correct then I assume that the orbital data now being issued for "Cosmos 2462" represent a piece of operational debris which the satellite left in orbit.   Unless the de-orbit delta-V was too little to bring the satellite down, and Cosmos 2462 is indeed being tracked in orbit, now in a decaying orbit.

If the latter scenario is correct then the satellite will probably be destroyed in orbit.

[Phillip Clark]

USSSN is showing that Cosmos 2462 re-entered on July 21st, and the last set of orbital data suggests that it would be by retrofire - the last orbit to be catalogued is too high for the satellite to have decayed naturally.   The decay rate of the object catalogued as "Cosmos 2462" is too slow for it to have been a small piece of debris being tracked between July 18th-21st.

There are also three new pieces of debris catalogued - D, E and F - but no orbital data are available, so presumably these have already decayed from orbit.

Maybe there was a de-orbit *attempt* on July 18th and then a successful de-orbit on July 21st?

[Olaf]

Here http://russianforces.org/blog/2010/07/cosmos-2462_satellite_complete.shtml is a conformation, that the re-entry was on July, 21st.