Dinogeorge@aol.com wrote: > Way back in early 1964, shortly after the 1963 US space > program completed, some government agency or other under > the auspices of newly installed president Lyndon B. Johnson > produced a list of the 60 spacecraft (if I remember > correctly) orbited by the United States in 1963. Included in > that list, for the final launch of the year, were these > spacecraft: > > 1963-055A Classified USAF payload Thor Agena D > December 21, 1963 > VAFB > 1963-055B Classified USAF payload > 1963-055C Classified USAF payload > > and they were first listed in the Spring 1964 TRW Space Log, > with orbital elements for the first two spacecraft only. The > third was listed by Space Log as "status unknown." The report filed by the U.S.A. with the U.N. on 1964 Feb 26 made no mention of a C object from the 1963-055 launch: http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/download.do?file_uid=1052 The other U.S. gov't report that listed a C object must have been in error. Here is how it could have happened. Someone involved in preparing the report may have referred to a list of objects sorted by catalogue number, which would have looked like this: 718 1963-055A 719 1963-055B 720 1963-054C Object 720 was the C object of an earlier U.S. launch, but someone reading quickly could have mistakenly read it as belonging to 1963-055. Ted Molczan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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