GCAT: General Catalog of Artificial Space Objects

GCAT Release 1.3.3 (2022 Dec 26) | Data Update 2023 Feb 08

Launch List Column Explanations

The lists have the following fields:

• Launch_Tag: an identifier for the launch. For orbital launches, this is the international (COSPAR) designation of the launch. For other launches, the designation is assigned by me using a pseudo-COSPAR format of the form yyyy-Xnnn, where yyyy is the year of launch, X is a letter, and nnn is an integer. The designations are explained in the introduction. See the detailed description in the Launch Designations section of the introduction.
• Launch_JD: the Julian Date (UTC) of launch, useful for sorting.
• Launch_Date, the UTC Gregorian calendar date of launch (defined as first motion, so may differ by a few seconds from some sources which use rocket ignition). The date is given in VagueDate format.
• LV_Type, name of the type of rocket used, as given in the LV table.
• LV_Variant - see discussion in the description of the LV table.
• Flight_ID: an identifier for the particular launch, for example the serial number of the launch vehicle or the mission number or name assigned by the launch agency.
• Flight, Mission, and FlightCode: - additional identifers for the launch. For orbital flights, at least one if these is usually the name of the payload. Some launches have a lot of different designations. I haven't been fully consistent about which name goes in which of the Flight, Mission, FlightCode fields, although usually names in a specific series are in the same column.
• Platform, Launch_Site and Launch_Pad: where the rocket was launched from. Usually Platform is blank and the launch site (see the Sites file) tells you where the rocket went up from, and the Pad gives you the specific location within the launch site. Platform is used for mobile sites such as submarines or planes. See Launch Sites and Platforms.
• Ascent_Site and Ascent_Pad Site and location of the actual rocket launch from a Platform, when different from the Launch_Site. For air launches, Launch_Site/Pad give the airport/runway of carrier plane takeoff, and Ascent_Site/Pad give the drop site location.
• Apogee - the highest altitude actually reached, in km. This field may be omitted for orbital launches. In many cases for non-orbital launches the value is a guess based on known capabilities of the launch vehicle, so only values with no appended question-mark should be taken as accurate.
• Range - the range in km measured along the curved surface of the Earth between launch site and impact site, for a suborbital launch. I have only recently added this field and very few entries are filled in.
• Destination (Dest) - the location of landing/impact of a suborbital flight. At present the values in this field are mnemonics that may or may not be obvious to the reader - sorry, I don't have a table of them at this stage. This is another recently added field and regarded as incompletely supported. Values in parentheses represent intended targets that were not reached due to a failure.
• Launch_Agency: Organization responsible for launch services (often different from the organization owning the payload). See the Organizations database.
• Launch_Code field. The first letter is the launch category - O for orbital, M for military missile, T for test rocket, A for atmospheric rocket, S for suborbital rocket other than missile, D for deep space mission. Also used occasionally are H (high altitude sounding rocket), R (reentry test), X (launch from world other than Earth), and Y (suborbital spaceplane with human crew). This field should be reliable for categories O and D, but the remaining letters are not always assigned fully consistently. It is mainly intended to separate out orbital and non-orbital launches.

  
  The second letter, possibly followed by digits, is the launch success fraction (see the definitions section ) Usually the launch success fraction code is S, F or U for Success, Fail or Unknown. Success implies propulsive success only, even if no data was returned from the payload. Also used is E, for pad explosion (no launch occurred, but included in the lists for completeness).

  
  For orbital launches partial success/failure values are sometimes given, e.g. OS80 or OF40. The values between 00 and 99 indicate a percentage success to be used in statistical assessments of launch vehicle reliability as originally described in JSR 669 and here in the launch success fraction part of the definitions section.

• Group: For suborbital science missions, indicates the leading organizations responsible for the science payload. Up to 3 are given separated by slashes. Following the last slash is a comma-separated list of names of the principal investigators.

  
  For orbital missions: This field encodes the type of launch service; the values are explained in the launch service code part of the definitions section.

  
  

• Category: For non-orbital launches: Type of flight. Not necessarily a rigorous set of designations.

  
  For orbital launches: Launch profile code. This records what the target orbit type was, how many upper stages where left in orbit, and what kind of debris mitigation manuever was carried out for them, if any. The codes are explained in the launch profile code part of the definitions section.

• Citation 1 (LTCite): this citation is the primary reference for the existence of the launch and for the given launch time. See the Refs file. "Wire" means that the time was taken from wire service stories, internet news sites or live launch broadcasts. I've been more careful with recording a specific source where the launch time was hard to find.
• Citation 2: (Cite) Additional citation of interest, for example reference for which launch pad was used, etc.

  
  

• Notes: A field for additional notes. Right now I have rarely used this.