Bjoern Gimle wrote: >The latest USSPACECOM catalog entries have widely varying inclinations, >but similar periods (about 3 hours) >Two of them appear to be pre-Sputnik !! >(Natural satellites, or is this a software glitch ?) By now you may have seen my earlier message, which points out that one of the objects is most likely debris from the breakup of USA 40's perigee kick stage. I suspect that the pre-Sputnik international designators were selected to avoid having to identify the parent launch. These elsets may have been released by accident, perhaps a software glitch, or an analyst pressing the wrong button. However, I suspect that it might be the result of a policy change, permitting debris associated with classified launches to be made public, but not identified. For the benefit of newcomers to the hobby, here is how we may identify some of these objects. The inclination will identify the launch site. Precessing the elset to the time of each classified lift-off from the site may reveal the launch. The orbital plane must be nearly coplanar with the site, and the direction of travel consistent with the allowed launch azimuths at the site. Of course some orbiting pieces may have changed their orbits significantly after launch, which would make this process much more difficult, or impossible to use, especially if much time has gone by. The 57 deg object was relatively easy, because there have been few non-shuttle 57 deg launches, and we know the orbits of all of the unclassified shuttle payloads, and the general orbits of a few of the classified ones. The second 56001AAA object is in a 28.3 deg orbit, so it may belong to one of many classified missions, launched on one of several vehicles. bye for now