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History of U.S. Space Surveillance and Satellite Cataloging: A Long and Winding Road
305 pages, Hardcover
Published September 15, 2025
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March 10, 2026
What a fascinating book!
The book is written in a very approachable style and is fun to read for people who have even worked peripherally with satellites (see my background later), this subject can get extremely complex in a big hurry.
This is a well written book and has an amazing amount of interesting history in it, detailing the satellite tracking effort. A lot of very talented people were given a very difficult task of developing a large new effort - and they have done a remarkably good job. And, as the book points out, there are many new challenges ahead.
In my opinion the book's index has left a lot of names out - I see that G Taft Devere is mentioned in the book several places (for instance on page xi in the Introduction) but his name is not in the Index. Taft is one of the best Orbital Analysts that the Air Force ever had and should be noted.
There are several things that should be expanded, an example is the "International Designator" which I first see on page 36. It is called the COSPAR (Committee on Space Research) designator also and is widely used in Europe. Certainly this was first assigned by Orbital Analysts and later the Committee was established and adopted that designator for satellites. Oddly, this Committee never gained much traction and they certainly just adopt what the Orbital Analysts assign.
As a guy who used these systems I wish that the book went into a bit more detail on the programs that orbital analysts used, they are a part of the history. A huge change was when the "Delta" or 496L computer was replaced by the 427M - the 496L was a classic mainframe from the early days and was all text output. The 427M had a very early Graphical User Interface and introduced techniques of using graphs to help orbital analysts - though there were earlier startlingly innovative programs that probably only showed their potential on the 427M consoles.
Another thing that should have been covered more, though details are hard to come by, is the Soviet/Russian satellite catalog that is somewhat available as the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON) catalog. We are told that Russia gave copies of the (ISON?) catalog to NASA but we didn't hear if it was just the ISON catalog (which omits many many satellites) or was it another, more complete, Russian satellite catalog.
So far I have learned a lot from the book and would recommend it, don't be concerned that it might be too technical.
A bit about me so that people know that I have an informed opinion. I have been involved in satellite tracking since 1978, when I reported to class to learn how to be an Air Force Orbital Analyst. I was an Orbital Analyst at the NORAD Cheyenne Mountain Complex until 1981 when I went to a BMEWS radar tracking station (Clear Air Force Station at the time) and was a Senior Director there. So a lot of the places that the book describes, and a lot of the systems that the book talks about, are ones that I was heavily involved in. I was originally trained on the "Delta" or 496L and was one of the first Orbital Analysts that was trained on the new 427M system.
I also took a graduate Orbital Mechanics course from one of the authors, Felix Hoots, PhD while I was in Colorado. I can attest that he is an amazingly smart guy. I have worked with a number of the people in book - John Gabbard, Nick Johnson, Paul Major, etc. I am NOT associated with the people who wrote the book and have no financial or other interests in it.
The book is written in a very approachable style and is fun to read for people who have even worked peripherally with satellites (see my background later), this subject can get extremely complex in a big hurry.
This is a well written book and has an amazing amount of interesting history in it, detailing the satellite tracking effort. A lot of very talented people were given a very difficult task of developing a large new effort - and they have done a remarkably good job. And, as the book points out, there are many new challenges ahead.
In my opinion the book's index has left a lot of names out - I see that G Taft Devere is mentioned in the book several places (for instance on page xi in the Introduction) but his name is not in the Index. Taft is one of the best Orbital Analysts that the Air Force ever had and should be noted.
There are several things that should be expanded, an example is the "International Designator" which I first see on page 36. It is called the COSPAR (Committee on Space Research) designator also and is widely used in Europe. Certainly this was first assigned by Orbital Analysts and later the Committee was established and adopted that designator for satellites. Oddly, this Committee never gained much traction and they certainly just adopt what the Orbital Analysts assign.
As a guy who used these systems I wish that the book went into a bit more detail on the programs that orbital analysts used, they are a part of the history. A huge change was when the "Delta" or 496L computer was replaced by the 427M - the 496L was a classic mainframe from the early days and was all text output. The 427M had a very early Graphical User Interface and introduced techniques of using graphs to help orbital analysts - though there were earlier startlingly innovative programs that probably only showed their potential on the 427M consoles.
Another thing that should have been covered more, though details are hard to come by, is the Soviet/Russian satellite catalog that is somewhat available as the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON) catalog. We are told that Russia gave copies of the (ISON?) catalog to NASA but we didn't hear if it was just the ISON catalog (which omits many many satellites) or was it another, more complete, Russian satellite catalog.
So far I have learned a lot from the book and would recommend it, don't be concerned that it might be too technical.
A bit about me so that people know that I have an informed opinion. I have been involved in satellite tracking since 1978, when I reported to class to learn how to be an Air Force Orbital Analyst. I was an Orbital Analyst at the NORAD Cheyenne Mountain Complex until 1981 when I went to a BMEWS radar tracking station (Clear Air Force Station at the time) and was a Senior Director there. So a lot of the places that the book describes, and a lot of the systems that the book talks about, are ones that I was heavily involved in. I was originally trained on the "Delta" or 496L and was one of the first Orbital Analysts that was trained on the new 427M system.
I also took a graduate Orbital Mechanics course from one of the authors, Felix Hoots, PhD while I was in Colorado. I can attest that he is an amazingly smart guy. I have worked with a number of the people in book - John Gabbard, Nick Johnson, Paul Major, etc. I am NOT associated with the people who wrote the book and have no financial or other interests in it.
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