RE: SATELLITE SITUATION REPORT

Jeff Hunt (jhunt@eagle1.eaglenet.com)
Sat, 28 Dec 96 08:53:14

--- On Fri, 27 Dec 1996 23:55:56 -0500 (EST)  Jay Respler 
<jrespler@injersey.com> wrote:

>Is there some simple quick way to sort date, #, and letter?   A-Z have to 
come before AA-AZ. 
>I have DOS, Windows, QSORT, WordPerfect and a spreadsheet.

A QUICK way would be to use SatSpy2 (Windows) and use the sorting feature of 
that program to sort either by cat.no. or name.  Then use Allen Thomson's 
large elset file. Since Thomson doesn't use noun names in his file, SatSpy2 
will use the int. designation in place of the noun name. Of course his file 
doesn't include all sats, but a large proportion of them.  A couple of 
months ago he increased the number to include additional sats, but I haven't 
seen any additional increases lately.

A link to SatSpy2 can be found (of course) at:
http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/sat/orbsoft.html

One of the places to find Thomson's elsets is at:
ftp://kilroy.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/space/elements/satelem/

>This recently cataloged object has 2 different catalog #s.  Which is right?
>
>24647 66-077D  OPS 0856 DEB          US    167.2  89.5  4342  3009
>23820 66-077D  OPS 0856 DEB          US    164.5  88.3  6251   880  .042

My data base (on SatPro) shows 24647 as 66-077P.  That makes sense as the 
OIG database shows 24312 as 66-077N and I believe they don't use the letter 
O so as not to confuse it with the number 0. I guess they shouldn't use the 
letters D and P either;-)

Jeff Hunt <jhunt@eagle1.eaglenet.com>