The following comes from David Dunham, of the CONTOUR Mission Design Team:

"On July 27, July 31, and August 3, the CONTOUR spacecraft will perform delta-V maneuvers at high altitude that might be observed from large areas of the dark side of the Earth. CONTOUR was launched on July 3rd into a 1.75-day-period Earth orbit that extends about 18 Earth radii, or almost a third of the way to the Moon, at apogee. On August 15, at 8:46 U.T., a solid rocket motor (SRM) in the center of CONTOUR will blast the spacecraft out of Earth orbit into a high-energy heliocentric trajectory that will make a distant Earth flyby a year later, then go on to encounter Comet Encke in November 2003. More Earth swingbys and comet encounters will occur after that. But for now, there are three good opportunities to observe the spacecraft while it is relatively close to the Earth.

The SRM burn would be quite spectacular, but it will be performed at perigee in daylight over the Indian Ocean, too far from the nearest island to be seen. Previous CONTOUR delta-V maneuvers, called Orbit Correction Maneuvers (OCM's), have been performed at perigee in daylight, so they, too, were not observable.

In summary, the three upcoming maneuvers are as follows:

		OCM6, a 58.5-second burn on July 27 centered at UTC 12h 02m 28.9s, 45,445 km over long. 162.42 deg. W., lat. 23.77 deg. N., visible from much of the Pacific Ocean, especially Hawaii, and also from Japan and other countries of the western Pacific, including Australia and New Zealand.
		OCM7, a 63.2-second burn on July 31 centered at UTC 17h 13m 09.9s, 108505 km over long. 146.91 deg. E., lat. 9.64 deg. N., visible from Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and most of Asia.
		OCM8, a 17.8-second burn on August 3 centered at UTC 07h 15m 55.4s, 12021 km over long. 138.49 deg. W., lat. 30.53 deg. N., visible from Hawaii and most of North America, especially the western part.

I don't know how bright these burns will appear; I hope that some observations of the July 27th maneuver can be made, especially video observations with sensitive cameras like the Watec 902H or Supercircuits PC164C. I think the CONTOUR spacecraft itself, which is always in sunlight, will be only 10th to 12th mag.; it is cylindrical, about 1.7 meters high and across, covered mainly with solar cells. The burns, with two 5-pound hydrazine thrusters, should be a few magnitudes brighter, but just how many, I don't know; maybe someone else with experience observing spacecraft maneuvers can give a good estimate. I will be interested in any observations, especially video, that might be made of these maneuvers."

If anyone sees these manuevers, please send us an email and let us know.

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