re: 9-digit catalog numbers, will current satellite tracking software work

From: Bill Gray via Seesat-l <seesat-l_at_satobs.org>
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2020 20:47:53 -0400
Hi Kevin,

    A late reply here :

    I've looked a bit at the documentation of how this is all supposed
to work.  There's some good description and useful links at

    https://celestrak.com/NORAD/documentation/gp-data-formats.php

    It sounds as if the "100K Crisis" for NORAD numbers is probably not
far off;  the new Space Fence on Kwajalein Atoll may blow right past
that,  possibly bringing us up to a quarter million objects.  So us
software developers will have our work cut out for us.

    It appears to me that at least for the nonce,  the new data will
be in a new format that supports nine-digit NORAD numbers and COSPAR
IDs beyond 2057.  But other than that,  the actual orbital data is
pretty much the same;  we can go on using our existing SGP4/SDP4
code.  If that's indeed the case,  we've got some work to do,  but
it shouldn't be an especially big deal.  I may,  for legacy software,
abuse the 3LE format to store "oversized" designations on line 0,
leaving lines 1 and 2 to store a traditional TLE with bogus
designations.  You'd have something that works with ancient software,
but still tells you (via the name) the actual designations.

    Short version : it'll be a minor headache for us programmers,  and
should be a still smaller nuisance for users.  (Unless Space-Track decides
to dump SGP4/SDP4 in favor of something snazzier.  The new format does
allow for alternatives.  But that would be really disruptive and seems
deeply unlikely to me.)

-- Bill
_______________________________________________
Seesat-l mailing list
http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
Received on Sat Jul 18 2020 - 19:50:03 UTC

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Sun Jul 19 2020 - 00:50:03 UTC