More on Object Numbers

Nico, PA0DLO, has recently emailed his observations which align with our own understanding of the current situation:

“AMSAT-OSCAR 73, ZACube 1 and HiNCube were launched from the same ISIPOD.

As they initially were close together, the JSpOC decided to release only one TLE  set for this cluster under object number 39417 (2013-066B). Now the distances between these satellites are slowly increasing. So the question is  – which satellite is object 39417?.

Detailed doppler measurements show that ZACube 1 is now about 25 s early compared to the TLE for object 39417, while OSCAR 73 is about 11 s early. This seems to indicate that object 39417 is actually  HiNCube.

Hopefully TLEs for OSCAR 73 and ZACube 1 will be published soon.”