<michael.waterman@gecm.com> said > I support Ted Molczan's proposal. In particular adding 500 to > the day (rather than 200) also avoids problems if there is a surge > in launches in a few years time. > > Would Ted be willing to maintain the registry of un-identified objects? > Whoever does it there should be the conditions > (a) that a new object is only added when it has accurately observed on > several occasions I agree that Ted's proposal has great merit. The details -- his scheme as proposed and modified seems perfectly acceptable -- are probably less important than simply establishing a uniform set of rules for naming unknown satellites(*) and working with the TLEs derived from observations. When and if agreement is reached on the rules, I suggest someone, probably Ted, write them up in a "How to report and work with observations of unknown/uncatalogued satellites" FAQ for http://www2.satellite.eu.org/satintro.html One possibility for a registry would be for one or more of the established Web site maintainers to include an unkn.tle file, rather like Mike McCants' classfd.zip. Actually, the unkn file wouldn't really be much different than classfd, except that the informal observer/analyst community has come to a consensus as to what the classfd objects are and has established good orbits for them. Rather like, in fact, the process by which NORAD itself moves objects from 8xxxx to [012]xxxx numbers. Going beyond the current proposal, it might also be useful to set up an archive of observations to facilitate analysis of unkns. The SeeSat-L message record currently serves this purpose to some extent, but a more compact and searchable version would be desirable. (*) I suggest we use the term "unknown satellite" or "uncatalogued satellite" in these discussions, lest we be joined by a certain other large and persistent three-letter interest group wielding search engines. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Apr 10 2000 - 09:08:14 PDT