Frederic - There is some confusion among us satellite trackers and that question comes up frequently. I have written some articles for a web site The Space Review and some of those may help: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3820/1 I am currently writing another one that should answer your questions more directly. I used to be one of the people who maintained the Satellite Catalog and have cataloged many satellites myself, the organizations have changed but a lot is still the same. Many launches are NOT reported by the launching agency, for instance many Russian and Chinese and other launches are not announced before they happen. Most launches are tracked within a first orbit, by the US satellite tracking network. The orbital analysts normally assign a satellite number (it used to be called a NORAD number) and that determines the COSPAR identification. The COSPAR identification has an A, B, C, etc and normally a payload would be A, the upper stage a B, etc. Of course that is not always the case, many launches have many payloads today. But the COSPAR is assigned by the US Space Force people and I have not yet heard of any argument or disagreement from the Committee. The US Space Force also assigns the "Common Name" for many satellites though there are many problems with that process. The default official Satellite Catalog is at Space-Track.org right now. A lot of the data is also available on CelesTrak.com but there is no information on CelesTrak that would differ from Space-Track for long. CelesTrak and other sites do sometimes try to correct mistakes on Space-Track, I have corrected a few myself. > Dear satellite trackers, > I am new in this field and I wonder how the link object<->id is > performed. > As I understand it, for each launch, > - the launching entity informs about the event on its website > (satellites names and goals, sometimes orbits, nav warning...) > - a few hours later, the satellite(s) & R/B are seen by spacetrack > and their TLE is published > - the NORAD id is an internal number attributed by "spacetrack" > But > - I though the cospar number was given by the Committee on Space > Research, > an international organization. Now I understand from the French > version of > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Designator > that since 1963, this number is given by the National Space > Science Data > Center (NSSDC), a NASA branch. > - How is this "primary information" made available ? > There many web sites delivering it, but is there an "official" > URL > with Cospar id, name, launch site/date, entity,...? > I tried https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/SpacecraftQuery.jsp but > only got > "Exception occurred while getting connection: > oracle.ucp.UniversalConnectionPoolException: > Cannot get Connection from Datasource: > java.sql.SQLRecoverableException: > IO Error: The Network Adapter could not establish the > connection" > - for a batch launch of small sats, how to be sure of the name<->id link ? This is more difficult than in should be!! Many times Space-Track makes mistakes and assigns the wrong name to a satellite number or assigns a generic name such as Object A. On missions where a number of satellites are launched the owners of the satellites should listen to each satellite from that launch to determine which is theirs! > With my best regards, and congratulations for your enthusiastic > work! > -- > Frédéric CASSAING ONERA - The French Aerospace Lab Please feel free to ask any questions that you have. Charles Phillips Spaceflight Research, LLC Houston, Texas 713-882-4578 sites.google.com/site/spaceflightresearchprojects/ _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list https://lists.seesatmail.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Thu Apr 25 2024 - 16:11:40 UTC
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Apr 25 2024 - 23:11:40 UTC