On Tue, 4 Jan 2005 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> What about the Apollo boosters? Are they being tracked?
No. There is no practical way to track them. The post-launch tracking
data is hopelessly stale, because it's almost certain that they have made
Earth encounters since, and their current orbits are very sensitive to
exactly how those encounters happened.
It's very likely that near-Earth object J002E3 -- temporarily captured
into a high and unstable Earth orbit in 2002, but since departed again --
is the Apollo 12 S-IVB stage. Ironically, that was the least well tracked
of the lost-into-solar-orbit S-IVBs, because its lunar gravity-assist
maneuver was botched and it was in high Earth orbit for a while, and its
eventual departure wasn't tracked at all. Its rediscovery (back in Earth
orbit!) pinned down its solar orbit quite well. For the others, we have
only rough guesses.
Henry Spencer
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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