GSFC OIG has started making historical element sets available, and I've just received my first batch. The initial request was for objects which are of historical interest and/or are simple spheres which should be useful as reference objects when studying the long-term orbital behavior of satellites (plus a couple which are of particular interest to me personally). At the moment, my archives contain elsets going back into the early '80s and before for the objects in the following table. I would like to distribute these data around the Net to make them generally available and to protect against loss. If anyone running a generally available archive would like copies, give me an e-mail or postal address and they'll be sent. NORAD Number of Epoch of Epoch of Object elsets first elset last elset 00005U 4840 59143.01 97310.59 Vanguard 1 00011U 5789 59135.88 97311.14 Vanguard 2 00900U 4921 64291.86 97311.26 Calsphere 1 01520U 4186 66003.78 97311.15 Calsphere 4(A) 14 inch, 2 kg white sphere 02825U 4441 67151.58 97311.03 20 inch, 2.4 kg Calsphere 02874U 4695 67193.25 97311.03 Calsphere 02909U 6262 67215.66 97311.22 Surcal 150 B 16 inch, 1.5 kg sphere 05398U 5762 71219.68 97311.07 Rigid Sphere 2, 37 kg 10967U 4544 78179.42 97311.20 Seasat 1 15333U 4893 84274.19 97311.51 Cosmos 1603 Note that the information on the geometry and mass of the spheres comes from sources of uncertain reliability, and could be significantly in error. Better data on these satellites would be very welcome.