As reported by the ever-helpful and ever-vigilant Mike McCants at http://users2.ev1.net/~mmccants/oigstatus.html, the Air Force will be taking over TLE duties from NASA OIG. Lt. Col. David Maloney of HQ AFSPC/XOCS (is that enough acronyms for one day?) spoke at the Satellite Operations and Safety Workshop at MIT Lincoln Lab this morning (public information on the workshop and its agenda is at http://www.ll.mit.edu/SOSW/, all content is in the public domain) and provided an update on the current status of the CFE operations and plans. The three-year pilot program was to start in May '04, beginning in the three phases shown in the briefing at Mike's site, and ending in May '07. However, the CFE operations could not begin until the SecDef signed an order to authorize them. The paper needing the signature was sent to Secretary Rumsfeld and is sitting on his desk, yet to be signed. The delay in beginning the website operations will not affect the May '07 end date of the program, but it will affect Phase 2 of the CFE-OIG transfer: Instead of shutting down NASA OIG at the beginning of Phase 2, OIG will remain in full operation for a 90-day transition period. As the note on Celestrak says, all NASA OIG accounts will be transferred to CFE, although you will have to go through a small re-registration process due to extra legal bits with the Air Force. One other note: the new CFE program places restrictions on redistributions of all TLE and related data without permission of Secretary Rumself. Col. Maloney said the lawyers are still trying to decide how that's going to work, so sites that redistribute data like Celestrak are still in something of a limbo. In summary, you'll be able to get your TLEs, but a piece of paper needs to be signed and the Air Force lawyers need to vet everything. Col. Maloney seemed very receptive to questions and comments regarding the new program. Contact information for him is listed at Celestrak. --Kati ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Oct 20 2004 - 10:56:45 EDT