Steffan Watkins provided a wealth of AIS data from MarineTraffic about the journey of Yuan Wang 3 to the #Change5 re-entry skip point in the Arabian Sea. The data reveals that the ship did some interesting stop and goes prior to arriving on station to look at what? THREAD. 
2020-12-10 UTC between 18:30 & 22:30, Mars was at the zenith when they stopped and set just before they got underway again. Perhaps providing support for TIANWEN-1 on the way to Mars?
2020-12-11 UTC between 14:20 & 22:05 more TIANWEN-1 watching at the zenith again it appears. The Mars bound probe has a big signal on X-band which is also used by #Change5.
2020-12-12 & 13th, 11:10 to 03:40 respectively, #Change5 TEI-2 (Lunar departure) would have been visible from the ship low in the east prior to it departing. A nearly full pass of TIANWEN-1 through the zenith would have been visible.
2020-12-13 between 14:20 & 15:20 a brief stop with Mars / TIANWEN-1 at the zenith. Starting to see a pattern here...
And then 2020-12-14 04:40 to 13:50 a prolonged stop to follow #Change5 after the first TCM-1 burn. With low lunar declination Yuan Wang 3 could be filling a coverage gap now in the Chinese DSN between China and Argentina.
Yuan Wang 3 has begun to loiter at the expected skip perigee spot in the Arabian Sea. I think the prolonged pauses in the trip here to Mars/TIANWEN-1 gaze may have been training sessions with a real radio signal at the zenith in the sky....
#Change5's re-entry will be largely at the zenith over the ship so testing systems and procedures may have been performed using the very handily located signal some 100 million km away from TIANWEN-1. H/T to @MarineTraffic and @steffanwatkins for the data and support.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
