USSC numbering nonsense

Daniel Deak (dan.deak@sympatico.ca)
Thu, 17 Dec 1998 17:02:03 -0500

Hi all,

Yesterday, having read a few posts about questionnable USSC
numbering policy, I decided to write to Dr.Joseph H. King,
director of WDC-A-R&S, about the situation as follows :


"Dr. King,

        I'm a visual satellite observer registered to SeeSat-L and I would
like to know why USSC issued a catalog number for the Unity module
since it has never flown by itself.

        Another unusual thing is having given catalog number to SAC-A
and MightySat-01 ten days before being released from the Shuttle
cargo bay !??

        Aren't there any specific rules for numbering orbiting objects ?
The satellite watchers community is quite puzzled these days by the
way USSC issues their catalog numbers."

Here is the reply I got today :


"Daniel, my organization has no influence over USSpacecom's assignments of
catalog numbers.  Relative to what the "rules" are, I can only speculate
that the rules were made some time ago, when the then-involved folks tried
to anticipate various future circumstances.  Either they anticipated a
Unity-like situation and agreed to assign numbers as they did recently, or
they did not anticipate this situation and someone at USSpacecom is trying
to make a best judgement.  I will see if there's someone at USSpacecom I
can forward your note to.

The situation is a bit awkward for us too, because now the international ID
for Zarya (98-067A as I recall) will have to serve as the ID for the whole
ISS (it will have to do double duty) while the ID for Unity (98-069F as I
recall) will relate only to Unity.

Joe King"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Daniel Deak
St-Bonaventure, Québec  <dan.deak@sympatico.ca>
45.9483°N, 72.6539°W, 58 m., UTC-5:00