Re: satwk15 report from OIG
Phillip Clark (psclark@dircon.co.uk)
Sun, 19 Apr 1998 18:59:14 +0100 (BST)
On Sun, 19 Apr 1998, Courtney wrote:
> > 1968-055E DELTA 1 DEB 25270 US 04 Jul 147.4 120.8 4950 778
> > 1993-014F START 1 DEB 25284 CIS 25 Mar 101.4 75.8 970 681
> Correct me if I wrong, but in the international dsignation, the first four numbers
> are the year, and the other three are the days in the year?
The first four numbers are the year of launch and the second three
numbers are the launch number within that year: thus 1968-055 was the
55th launch in 1968. The specific object designator is the leter (in a
few cases, letters) following the launch number.
> If so, I guess thse
> object were luanched in 1968 and 1993 respectively and are both dead stages
> from spent rockets(by the way, what is Start 1?). Now since this is under the
> category of newly added objects, does that mean these objects have been
> floating around in LEO for all this time without being tracked?
There is plenty of minor debris in orbit around the earth which has not
been officially catalogued. Small pieces of debris from a launch can go
undetected until orbital decay brings them within the capabilities of the
tracking radars, etc. Additionally, USSPACECOM maintains a temporary
catalogue of objects - things which are seen only a few times before
decay, maybe seen only once and an accurate orbit cannot be determined.
Objects get transferred from the temporary catalogue (which is
classified) to the public listings which we see when orbits are confirmed
and also when USSPACECOM bureaucracy can be bothered to do the transfer.
Start-1 is the first all-solid-propellant launch vehicle to be used by
the Russians and it it based upon the RSD-10 (SS-20) and RS-12M (SS-25)
missile technology.
> Looking at this list, I see that some ojects have been flying around uselessly
> for many years. Are they international agreements to keep this trash to a
> minimum?
There are now agreements (non-binding in some cases) to minimise the
amount of junk which a launch produces and also to minimise the lifetimes
of rocket stages which are discarded in regularly-used orbits: for
example those in GTO and the Iridium launches. However, one cannot
predict explosions in orbit. The most debris to be tracked from an
in-orbit explosion is from the Pegasus 1994-029B explosion where for the
first time the international designators for the pieces have had to go
into three characters (AAA, etc).
Phillip Clark
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Phillip S Clark 25 Redfern Avenue
Molniya Space Consultancy Whitton
Compiler/Publisher, Worldwide Satellite Launches Middx TW4 5NA
U.K.
Specialist in "space archeology" - the older and more obscure the more
interesting it is !
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