RE: Sputnik 1 and 2 TLE

JAY RESPLER (jrespler@InJersey.com)
Thu, 28 Aug 1997 23:48:12 -0400 (EDT)

> Who would have believed such a coincidence in which the elements for the 
> oldest sats 00001 and (almost) the newest sat, FORTE just happened to have 
> the same catalog number.

To avoid confusion here, the 00001 is just an arbitrary cat # for FORTE. A 
real number is never assigned until an object is actually in orbit and 
tracked by SpaceCom.  Note that international id, 99001A, is also 
fictional.  FORTE is not the first launch of 1999. (as far as I can tell now)
                                                ^



Jay Respler
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