Ariane 6 VA262 - 2024-07-09 19:00 UTC

Last night have optically observed the Ariane 6 mission. Here are the pictures. The Object numbers should be taken with care as this how they were at dusk. They might have changed later due to id swapping by Space Track.

First 3 objects (60238, 60237, 60236) in lower right are close together and are invisible. I guess they are smaller objects, that come from the same deployer:

Next one (60239) is flashing and varying in brightness as seen in the next two pictures. It is probably tumbling, and it could be the Ariane 6 Upper stage. But I am not sure yet! (On the left is a classified NOSS pair)


Then we get Object 60240, which looks invisible at first sight, but in the second picture there is a very very very faint trace running late on the predicted position.


Next one was a bit off track, to 60241, 60242. It is very bright and steady, likely one of the bigger satellites:


Last two (60243, 60235) were invisible:


I hope the optical properties of the objects can help in the identification!

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