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