AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin: December 18, 2000

AMSAT-DL and AMSAT-NA forwarded ANS the following AO-40
information:

NORAD has found AO-40 to be in one piece.

The radar cross section was as expected with no other pieces
found nearby. This should end speculation of an explosion as
NORAD found only one object with a radar cross section that was
consistent with a satellite the size of AO-40.

The command station team is continuing recovery operations.

AMSAT-NA’s N2WWD provided ANS the following preliminary
Keplerian elements based on a single radar pass. More accurate
orbital elements should follow from NORAD in the near future —
following a second radar pass that should provide time and
geometric distribution of the tracking data.

AO-40       
1 26609U 00072B  00352.42798611 .00000000 00000-0 00000-0 0 115
2 26609 6.3033 237.3129 8126708 194.7923 102.4478 1.27093349 581

Satellite: AO-40 
Catalog number: 26609
Epoch time: 00352.42798611
Element set: 11
Inclination: 6.3033 deg
RA of node: 237.3129 deg
Eccentricity: 0.8126708
Arg of perigee: 194.7923 deg
Mean anomaly: 102.4478 deg
Mean motion: 1.27093349 rev/day
Decay rate: 0.00000e+00 rev/day^2
Epoch rev: 58
Checksum: 266

Stay tuned to ANS for additional bulletins from AMSAT, the
official source for information on AMSAT OSCAR-40.

[ANS thanks AMSAT-NA and AMSAT-DL for this information]

Please send any amateur satellite news or reports to the
ANS Editors at ans-editor@amsat.org,
or to ANS Editor Dan James, NN0DJ, at nn0dj@amsat.org.