The Deep Space Catalog - $title

Jonathan C. McDowell

Oct 2023: Rev 1.1

Conclusion

With the launch of interplanetary cubesats (JPL's MARCO A and B), commercial and non-governmental interplanetary flight (SpaceX's Falcon Heavy test launch and SpaceIL's B'reshit lunar mission) and the advent of garbage disposal in solar orbit (United Launch Alliance's launch of several discarded Centaur stages with extra propellant to escape trajectories after deploying low Earth orbit payloads), humanity's use of deep space is booming despite a situational awareness vacuum. It is time to get serious about public record-keeping for deep space launches.

The initial public release of the Deep Space Catalog was made available in October 2019 at https://planet4589.org/space/deepcat/index.html

If any reader of this paper has access to deep space trajectory information for objects whose data is not on JPL Horizons or another public site, the author would be very happy to hear from them.