Re: 9-digit catalog numbers, will current satellite tracking software work

From: John A. Dormer 2 via Seesat-l <seesat-l_at_satobs.org>
Date: Sun, 19 Jul 2020 01:56:26 -0500
All interesting suggestions, of course, but Dr. Kelso has already got a 
solution in hand. This is what we should be targeting:

https://celestrak.com/NORAD/documentation/gp-data-formats.php
<https://celestrak.com/NORAD/documentation/gp-data-formats.php>

Much of the heavy lifting to read the new format is already complete and 
available here:

https://spacedatastandards.org/

I strongly urge all who have an interest in this to read up on the 
formats outlined in the first link, and begin (license-permitting) to 
work with any code examples there, or use tools like Xerces or its 
followers to develop their own libraries.

The formats outlined above include the ability to specify >which< 
celestial body a vehicle is in orbit around, and are therefore general. 
This will also similar families of tools to work with radio tracking 
seamlessly.

Yes, there are still some issue with our own tools for making 
observations, but the above should provide the limits which will be seen 
in decades to come.

     John

On 7/19/2020 00:57, Chris Kuethe via Seesat-l wrote:
> Since I'm backing most of my tooling with a database it's a simple matter
> to have columns for 5 digit norad numbers, 7 character international
> designators, up-converted 9 or 10 character designators (assuming >1000
> launches per year and maybe a bunch of debris from them all), as well as
> individual columns for year, launch, and piece). For non-norad catalogs, I
> just put any old thing into the object identifier fields when I'm
> generating a TLE from the orbital parameters, but usually have sentinel
> values ('99999' and '99999ZZZ'), then put the identifying information I do
> have into the 0 (name) line.
>
> As long as the checksum and whitespace is right, python-sgp4 and
> python-skyfield don't really make much use of the identifier fields. I'm
> not yet sure about stellarium, gpredict, look4sat, ... have the Powers That
> Be said what they're going to do yet? Perhaps reusing the ephemeris type
> and element set number fields?
>
> On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 12:30 PM Kevin Fetter via Seesat-l <
> seesat-l_at_satobs.org> wrote:
>
>> I have been reading about the need to use 9-digit catalog numbers. What
>> effect will this have on software, as current one''s like guide 8 use tle's
>> with 5 catalog numbers, to compute where a satellite is.
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Kevin
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>
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Received on Sun Jul 19 2020 - 01:58:05 UTC

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