Celestrak adds catalog digit, fixes Y2K bug

11970-01-01 6 days ago 4 commentsRead Article on celestrak.org

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion Sentiment

100% Positive

Analyzed from 97 words in the discussion.

Discussion (4 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

VoidWhisperer•about 3 hours ago

Next they should fix their SSL certificate

altairprime•about 1 hour ago

Technically, this is year (2020), because that’s when they added CSV export, given the article title. Looks like they crossed the threshold a week ago?

OymInIRole•about 3 hours ago

Basically the satellite-tracking version of IPv4 exhaustion — five-digit NORAD catalog IDs cap at 99999, and mega-constellations are burning through the remaining space fast.

omoikane•about 2 hours ago

I think the number actually runs out at 69999:

https://celestrak.org/NORAD/documentation/gp-data-formats.ph...

In the linked bluesky thread, they have been estimating when they will need 6 digit numbers, and seems like it was a few days earlier than their previous prediction.

https://bsky.app/profile/tskelso.bsky.social/post/3mlg2dpuqd...