Phillip Clark wrote: The fourth stage only appears under its > own designator once it has separated from the satellite. > We can argue forever whether the transfer orbits should be assigned to the > payload or the final stage rocket, but USSPACECOM seems to have made the > decision that such orbits should appear under the payload's ID and > catalogue number. This policy was introduced for International Designation in early years of spaceflight by COSPAR, not by USSPACECOM or OIG at GSFC. The letter A should be always assigned to the (primary) payload, the following letters to the secondary payloads or spent rocket stages, the to debris etc. Therefore it is in accordance with this policy, that BEFORE rocket stage separation the whole object consisting of satellite and rocket stage bears the ID of the satellite. -- Mgr. Antonin Vitek, CSc. Office: Main Library, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Narodni 3, CZ-11522 Praha 1 - Phone: +420(2)21403255, fax +420(2)24240611 Home: Kytin 127, CZ-25210 Mnisek p. B., Czech Republic Phone: +420(305)592865 - Coord.: 14.2194 deg E, 49.8488 deg N, 442 m ASL My satellite home page: http://www.lib.cas.cz/www/space.40/index.html ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jun 19 2001 - 14:08:44 PDT