TLE Satellite Catalog Number

Orekit development
1

Hi all,

After talking with some colleagues, they told me about the possibility that the Satellite Catalogue Number (SCN) for TLE could be changed from 5 digits to 9 digits. The reason is that the 5-digit format may soon no longer be sufficient to support the growing number of space objects.

So I did some research and came across an article from 2013 showing that this format change is planned for 2019 1. I also came across a Twitter post from March 2020 saying that OneWeb had fun using the 9-digit format for their TLE on Spacetrack 2.

Currently, the official format is still 5 digits. However, if it had to be changed to 9 digits, the modification, certainly trivial to achieve, should be done in Orekit.

As I’m not a big TLE user and I know that there are a lot of people using TLE on this forum :wink:, I wonder if you have any information about this possible change of format?

Thank you,
Bryan

2

I’ve heard of various proposals along those lines, but I haven’t heard of one being officially implemented by 18 SPCS, though T. S. Kelso would probably be the first to know and implement it if it happened.

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3

As Evan said, I’ve heard lots of chatter about it for some time but I’ve seen nothing concrete yet.

4

Dr. T. S. Kelso is very active on Twitter, he would surely let everyone know too!

5

Dr. T. S. Kelso has published a new article related to this, on May 27th 2020.
https://celestrak.com/NORAD/documentation/gp-data-formats.php

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