BeiDou/Compass Satellites Launched April 29 Now Being Tracked

News courtesy of CANSPACE listserv.

The two BeiDou-2/Compass satellites launched on April 29 became active on May 6. Several tracking stations in the Asia/Pacific area began tracking the satellites at about 08:00 UTC.

The medium Earth orbit (MEO) satellites, identified by their international designators 2012-018A and 2012-018B and by Chinese officials as M3 and M4, are using pseudorandom noise codes 11 and 12. M3 and M4 are in the same orbit plane,  a different one than that of M1, the first BeiDou-2/Compass MEO satellite launched.

A view of the three MEO satellites in their orbit planes is pictured here:

The one-orbit ground tracks of the satellites are pictured here (click to enlarge):

Tracking of the satellites by NORAD/JSpOC appears to have been interrupted when the satellites fired their apogee kick motors to circularize the orbits. The last days the satellites were tracked in their transfer orbits were 30 April and 1 May. They were recovered by NORAD/JSpOC on 9/10 May. Likely the orbit circularizations occurred around April 30 / May 1.

Recent two-line element sets for the three MEO satellites are given below:

BEIDOU M1
1 31115U 07011A   12134.10254588 -.00000105  00000-0  10000-3 0  5834
2 31115 056.7122 028.7463 0003954 199.1314 301.1397 01.86191632 34665

BEIDOU M3
1 38250U 12018A   12132.52529875 +.00000052 +00000-0 +10000-3 0 00275
2 38250 055.1626 116.9959 0024183 186.6025 335.0953 01.86239286000385

BEIDOU M4
1 38251U 12018B   12133.86489950  .00000061  00000-0  10000-3 0   262
2 38251 055.0887 116.4855 0024672 179.1060 208.4713 01.86163690   419