ROSAT Reentry - a few resources

Well, its only a few days now until the ROSAT satellite reenters, and since following UARS was so much fun lets do it again. Not as big as UARS, but some parts of this 2400 kilogram satellite will not burn up on reentry, and still hit the ground.


So what is this ROSAT thing anyway? The wikipedia page describes the Röntgensatellit...
wiki


The satellite is operated by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), who have a webpage about the reentry, with their predicted reentry time...
DLR


The website heavens-above is just one of many sites that can be used to see where the satellite is right now.
Since there was a bit of confusion last time, it should be mentioned again that EVERY tracking site just uses a simple mathematical model of a satellite orbit, and does not actually track any object in real time. Nevertheless, you can see where it SHOULD be at this time...
heavens-above


The 'tracking' website n2yo was very popular with the UARS reentry, so popular in fact that it got bogged down and unavailable in the heat of the moment. But here it is...
n2yo


Because the tracking websites may become too busy, you can use a program on your own computer instead.
One such program is...
Orbitron
Get it to download the latest TLE data files, and the ROSAT satellite will be found in the 'science' file.


Almost live updates from somebody on twitter...

@ROSAT_Reentry
Predicted Reentry Time = 23 October, 13:24 UT
Note that this graph also lists expected reentry prediction times from a bunch of different organisations. You dont have to trust NASA on this - in fact if you took the time you could start making such things yourself, at home... as the people on the SeeSat mailing list do.


If NASA mention it on their twitter feed, you get it here...
@NASA


If you're such a fan that you need an app for your iphone...
rosatapp


Here is another independent reentry prediction...
Predicted Reentry Time: 24 SEP 2011 @ 05:10 UTC ± 2 hours
Aerospace


An avid group of satellite watchers share their info via the SeeSat mailing list. You can read the messages...
SeeSat


Hope this helps.

reply to post by alfa1
Thanks, that's very thorough. It appears to be going a lot slower than UARS was. Only about 7.4 mph. Kind of a dull watch.

I see Hoagland's 19.5 made the chart.
He'll be ecstatic!

reply to post by alfa1


F & S big help here my 2 cents
Ok my Update on ROSAT Sat.

I'm using orbitron
www.stoff.pl...

And Heaven-above
www.heavens-above.com...

and Spaceflight Now
www.spaceflightnow.com...

and
satellite.tracks.free.fr...

and DLR
www.dlr.de...
10432/620_read-830/

and n2yo
www.n2yo.com...
Have FUN

S+F for this collection. What I can provide is this live blog about the reentry:

German Reentry Blog or the Google Translation of this blog as the original source is in German.

There is also an official German Twitter feed provided by the DLR. They also have one in English but this one contains less informations. Unfortunately I can't use Googles Translate mode to fetch twitter pages

As the lens this time will impact in one piece (at least this is what they predict) it might pose a higher risk than UARS although the overal mass is less. Would be nice if this crash in a desert so nobody get's hurt but with the possibilty to recover and analyse some parts.

Currently predicted reentry point with +/-6h track or Link to Reentrynews:

Ya most tracking model must be off by a bit
had clear sky and did not see it
I'm at work so can't stay out all night and look for it
like last time will try again tomorrow night
Happy Hunting

I know it is off topic but this is the second time I have seen the word ROSAT in the recent threads and I actually thought it was a thread about a Roast?

omg I better log off and eat. xxx I will come back and read it after I have eaten a Roast.