Re: USA 320-323

Agreed - holding back 'USA' numbers has never been deliberate policy and it has great potential for 'egg on face' with a hole in the numbering sequence if a satellite fails to get released.

If the USA satellites are within the original declared manifest of 105 items then they are alternative names for objects that we already know about. However, there is no obvious candidate group among the US-supplied payloads.

If they are not alternative names for any of the originally manifest, there may be an accounting problem.

They boost the total to 109, excluding any extraneous parts of release mechanisms or equipment covers. 

Five items are still inside D-Orbit's ION SCV taking the number down to 104. There was a suggestion that two of satellites did not separate but SpaceX has not delivered on its promise to clarify the situation, making a possible 102.

Space-Track has catalogued and issued element sets for 96 objects including USA 320-323, making a discrepancy of six or eight objects.

It's nearly two weeks since the launch making it unlikely that they have not been detected, so what are the missing items?

Summary:

  4 - USA satellites
100 - distinct payloads expected to date
____
104 - Total

96 - catalogued items
  2? - failed to release
____
98? - accounted for

Robert Christy

> On 26 Jan 2022, at 05:51, Leo Barhorst via Seesat-l <seesat-l_at_satobs.org> wrote:
> 
> Space-Track has catalogued USA 320-323 as 2022-002 CV, CX, CY, CZ.
> They were not on the published list of payloads of Transporter 3 mission.
> 
> Jonathan McDowell guessed they are the ESPA satellites yet to be released
> from LDPE-1 2021-118B.
> But then they would be mis-catalagued by Space-Track.
> 
> Regards
> Leo
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