Alan ... Most of what I know about this comes from some of our past conversations. But ... When I first applied (in 2005) for our authorization to re-distribute the KEPs (in TLE format), I had a conversation with the then officer-in-charge of approving the TLE re-distribution authorizations at Air Force Space Command. He said exactly what you said, "There is a law/regulation which covers launches with military or other classified payloads." He did not elaborate any further and I got the feeling that he did not what to answer further questions on that subject. I (and anyone else who is not the owner/operator) cannot go into SpaceTrack and directly download the TLEs from SpaceTrack for satellites launched on a military launch vehicle.
It is obvious that the owner/operator of the satellite can obtain the current TLEs, so for now, we get them from that entity. It is an extra step, but it can be done. Once we acquire the TLEs from the owner/operator, we are free to re-distribute as needed.
I am sure that the owner/operator of a satellite on a military launch has a similar agreement that AMSAT has with SpaceTrack. Once AMSAT downloads the TLE data from SpaceTrack and puts the TLEs in our format, it becomes AMSAT's product. AMSAT (and anyone else that AMSAT sends it to) are free to send that data to anyone else. At AMSAT we do ask those re-distributing KEP data from AMSAT to leave the headers in place, thus giving AMSAT credit as the primary re-distributing data source.
I hope this helps.
Ray Hoad WA5QGD
-----Original Message----- From: AMSAT-BB [mailto:amsat-bb-bounces@amsat.org] On Behalf Of Alan Sent: Sunday, July 5, 2015 2:18 PM To: 'Stephan Greene'; 'Amsat-bb' Subject: Re: [amsat-bb] Adding NO-84 PSAT to Gpredict
Steve,
There is a law/regulation which covers launches with military or other classified payloads. (Somebody have the exact reference?) It prevents releasing the Keps in the normal way for the secondary payloads, so they have to come indirectly from the people who own the individual satellites. For instance, you can find all the other Keps from that launch here:
http://mstl.atl.calpoly.edu/~ops/ultrasat/ultrasat_jspoc.txt
It is updated every couple of days, instead of the 3-4 times a day we are used to. You need to match the actual names with the satellite and object number, or get them with the weekly updates to NASA.ALL.
73s,
Alan WA4SCA
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