Obfuscated Orbit: Newsletter Challenge (October 2018)

Show me the calculations, any number of things may have been miscalculated....

"The rate at which a low satellite orbit decays is a function of atmospheric density at each point along the orbit together with a satellite's effective cross sectional area A, mass m, and drag coefficient C_D. In many cases, these last three parameters cannot be independently determined and a ballistic coefficient [ B = C_D A/m ] is used instead. ."

The turning of the object can not be predicted in many cases therefore the drag of the atmosphere cannot be accurately determined....my guess is our amateur used the straight ballistic coefficient and the satellite presented broadest section that held true into the wind creating more drag than calculated....

Solar activity can cause the atmosphere to expand, increasing drag on the satellite.

"The world's eyes are on the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) headed toward re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. The satellite is currently predicted to re-enter sometime on the afternoon of Friday, September 23, 2011, but it hasn't been easy to precisely determine the path and pace of UARS despite the fact that scientists well understand how satellites move through space. The problem lies in the fact that space itself changes over time -- the upper layers of Earth's atmosphere can warm up and, more importantly, puff up in response to incoming energy and particles from the sun."

https://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/solar-effects.html

A good example was SkyLab:

"British mathematician Desmond King-Hele of the Royal Aircraft Establishment predicted in 1973 that Skylab would de-orbit and crash to earth in 1979, sooner than NASA's forecast, because of increased solar activity.^[137] Greater-than-expected solar activity^[140] heated the outer layers of Earth's atmosphere and increased drag on Skylab. By late 1977, NORAD also forecast a reentry in mid-1979;^[136] a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientist criticized NASA for using an inaccurate model for the second most-intense sunspot cycle in a century, and for ignoring NOAA predictions published in 1976.^[141]"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab

Well for one he said "exactly two months"

28,30,or 31 day months?

Longest 2-month period is 62 days (e.g. Jul & Aug), and shortest is 59 days (e.g. Jan & Feb (non-leap-year)), so worst-case difference of 3 days - but re-entry was more than 14 days early.

As the decaying orbit enters the exosphere the craft very likely encountered micro-space junk the contact with scrubbed equally micro levels of kinetic energy.

The drag produced by the atmosphere isn't a constant. Solar activity changes the amount of stuff the satellite will run into as it orbits.

Two weeks is a big error.

The satellite was weighed in kilograms and he calculated the figure as if it were in pounds.

"what went wrong in the astronomer's calculation?"

I'm just guessing here with the amount of info that was given...

I think he left something out of his calculation, like a number or something like that...

In reality, I would guess that the astronomer didn't have a map of the orbits of all the space junk that is circling the globe. It is quite possible that his calculations were correct but the satellite collided with some space crap which then changed the trajectory.

They did say he was an armature. Professionals at NASA would never let something like this happen (more than once), not here or on the surface of Mars...

Is this related to the lost Mars probe because of a mix-up between calculation units?

Answer is posted.