David Palmer

New Analysis: There is _no_ evidence of deployment. The drop in BB6's orbit is due to the solar flare puffing up the atmosphere. Most other satellites at that altitude dropped by a comparable amount. Details of the analysis: I took space-track data from all 336 satellites that are between 500 and 525 km (excluding Starlinks, which are under thrust). I scaled each sat's period vs time so that Jan 14 is at 1 and Jan 19 is at 0. This would make every constant-cross-section object fall along the same track as determined by atmospheric density ratio over time; taking out the effects of each satellite's altitude, mass and cross section. I plotted the scaled period vs time for all 336 objects, using a low-alpha gray to emphasize the general trend. I plotted BB6 in blue. The result: Almost every satellite had an excess decay event about a day long starting around Jan 20. The BB6 data is right on the line of everyone else of cumulative effect, even though the details during the decay event are between space-track points. Therefore, there is no evidence in the drag data that BB6 changed its drag profile by deploying/unfurling anything. The plot does show that BB6 reduced its drag substantially around Jan13. I believe that this is due to stabilizing its attitude so that the tuna-can shape presents minimum drag. As I mentioned before I don't think that this is evidence of a thruster running since the equivalent thrust is 1% of what you would expect from a Hall thruster.