1,147 Passes Over Nine Years. The Catalogue Never Issued A Number.
Four years of litigation produced the daily observation summaries, the rule that keeps the object off the public list, and the routing sheet for its identification file. At the foot of the sheet, in pen: no review date.
A months-long reporting project. Documents cited below are held in The Vault and available to readers.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — ANALYST 4C-0117 has been observed 1,147 times in nine years. It has never been given a catalogue number.
The summaries arrived on 6 May 2026, four years and seven weeks after we asked and after one administrative appeal. They are dull documents: sensor, epoch, range, range-rate, four lines to a pass, 4,411 pages.
On 1,147 of those lines the object is carried under a working designation instead of a number. A working designation is what an analyst writes down before the catalogue decides what a thing is.
The catalogue has not decided. What the summaries show is the catalogue declining to decide, on a fixed schedule, for nine years.
By year: 96 passes in 2017, then 141, 128, 133, 119, 152, 108, 131, and 139 in 2025. The gaps are logged maintenance outages at named sensors.
The rule that keeps it off the list
Released in the same tranche, unredacted, and without our having asked for it by name, is section 4 of the office's own cataloguing manual. Rule 4-C reads:
"Where identification of a tracked object is pending, the object shall be carried at analyst designation and shall not be promulgated to the public catalogue. A designation carried under this rule shall be reviewed at intervals set by the officer invoking it."
Read the last clause twice. The rule requires a review. It does not set the interval. The officer invoking it sets that, and an interval set by the person a review would inconvenience is an interval that can be forever.
Five desks, fourteen months
The identification file was raised on 3 February 2018 by the desk that could not identify the object, and it was ended on 11 April 2019 by the desk that did not have to.
Between those dates it crossed Orbit Analysis, which confirmed the elements; Launch Correlation, which ran the object against every declared launch and every catalogued break-up and reported no candidate; and Release Review, which raised no objection to promulgation.
Nothing on the sheet argues against issuing a number. Four desks found no reason not to and the file went all the way up.
At the foot of the page, in pen, in a hand that also initials it: Hold at analyst status. No review date. The initials are H.D.V.
The officer
They belong to Colonel Harlan D. Vess, catalogue officer from 2016 to 2020, now retired in Ohio. We wrote twice and went to his door once.
"I signed a lot of things," he said. "I'm not going to talk about any of them, and you shouldn't take that as meaning anything except that I'm not going to talk about them." He closed the door politely. That is his whole answer, printed entire because a refusal deserves accurate reporting.
Teodoro Vasquez-Halloran, who worked orbit analysis in the same building for ten years, looked at the sheet for a long time and confirmed the sequence, the desks and the pen.
The orbit itself
The summaries give elements as well as ranges, and the elements are the least ambiguous thing in the release.
Inclination is printed as INCL 079.4 R. The office writes the acute angle with a retrograde flag; in the ordinary convention that is 100.6 degrees, and it is why at least one published account of this object has it going the wrong way round the Earth.
Perigee altitude is 731 kilometres, apogee 1,684. Across nine years and a full solar maximum the perigee has not moved outside plus or minus 1.1 kilometres, and the argument of perigee precesses at exactly the rate the Earth's oblateness requires, with nothing left over for drag.
Objects at that height, made of the things we launch, do not do that. What it constrains is the subject of the companion analysis published beside this story today.
What the office says
Dr. Estella Ruthven-Amadi, who has held the catalogue office since 2022, answered at length. Her reply runs unedited at the foot of this page and it is the most useful document in this story.
She confirms that Rule 4-C was invoked on 11 April 2019, that the invocation has never been lifted, and that no review date was ever set. She confirms the rule has been invoked nine times since the catalogue began. She declines to say what the other eight were, and is careful to tell us she is declining rather than unable: the list, she writes, is in front of her as she types.
She also concedes the drafting fault, unprompted, and says she has asked for section 4 to be reopened.
What is still shut
We know where this object has been every few days for nine years. We do not know what it looks like. The radar cross-section tables, the photometry and every optical frame were withheld in full, and we are litigating them with a first hearing set for March 2027.
Our vault holds a smaller cousin of this in PX-1330, an air-traffic log where twenty-three uncorrelated returns a month appear four months running and somebody writes ask CN in the margin.
That note was never answered either. This one at least has a name on it.
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Sources & Method
We asked for nine years of daily observation summaries, not for a summary of them, because a summary is written by somebody with a view. The request took four years, one administrative appeal and £41,000 in costs. We read every page against the office's own cataloguing manual, put the routing sheet in front of two people who had worked in the building, and sent the entire draft — figure, documents, quotations and all — to the current catalogue officer twenty-one days before publication with no deadline attached.
Who we spoke to
- Daily observation summaries, 2017–2025, 4,411 pages, national space-surveillance network, cataloguing office. Obtained under freedom-of-information legislation after a request filed 19 March 2022 and one administrative appeal Released 6 May 2026 Sensor, epoch, range and range-rate, four lines to a pass. The object appears on 1,147 of them under a working designation.
- Cataloguing manual, section 4, released unredacted, The office's own rules for what may be promulgated to the public catalogue. Released in the same tranche, without our having asked for it, in answer to a request for 'any rule under which an object may be withheld' 6 May 2026 Rule 4-C is quoted in full in this story. The office has not disputed our transcription.
- Routing sheet, identification file 4C-0117, One page, five desk stamps, fourteen months, one handwritten instruction. Released with desks three and four redacted; the names were restored on administrative appeal in July 2026 Released 6 May 2026, restored 22 July 2026
- Colonel Harlan D. Vess (ret.), Catalogue officer, 2016–2020; wrote the instruction at the foot of the sheet. Approached twice by letter and once at his front door in Ohio; declined to discuss the entry. His whole answer is quoted in this story. June and August 2026
- Teodoro Vasquez-Halloran, Orbit analyst at the same office, 2011–2021; retired. Interviewed on the record three times, twice by video call and once in person; shown the routing sheet and asked to identify nothing he had not signed June–August 2026 Confirms the desk sequence and the pen. Declines to say whether he ever saw the object's radar signature, on the ground that the answer is itself classified.
Documents
- PX-1330 — Federal Aviation Administration primary-return anomaly log, Sector 41, extract accepted
What we could not confirm
- What ANALYST 4C-0117 is. We have nine years of where it has been and nothing whatever about what it looks like. The radar cross-section tables, the photometry and every optical frame were withheld in full under a national-security exemption. We filed for those separately on 4 June 2026 and we are litigating them; the schedule puts a first hearing in March 2027 and we will publish the outcome either way.
- The other eight. The office confirms that Rule 4-C has been invoked nine times since the catalogue began and will not give the designations, the dates, the desks, or whether any of the other eight were later promulgated. We do not know whether they are eight objects like this one or eight pieces of somebody's classified hardware, and the difference is the whole question.
- Who sat at desks three and four. The restored sheet carries a printed desk name and a pair of initials for each. The office's internal telephone directory for 2018 is itself withheld, so two of the five people who moved this file across fourteen months are, to this newspaper, two sets of letters.
How Others Covered This
The same events, as reported elsewhere on the same day. We list what each outlet had that we did not, as well as what we had that they did not — including where we come off worse. Why we print this.
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The Meridian TelegraphThe Thing They Refuse To Number: Nine Years Of Secret Passes
Treated the working designation as an admission of alien provenance and the release of the summaries as a leak rather than a lawful disclosure.
Had that we did not
The pass counts by year, taken from our published figures and credited.
Left out
That the summaries were released to a newspaper that asked for them, on a form, and that the office has never once claimed the object does not exist.
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The Continental WireCatalogue Office: Uncorrelated Object Remains Under Routine Assessment
Ran the office's statement at length and the documents at a paragraph, in the order the office would have chosen.
Had that we did not
The statement in full, accurately, including the sentence about analyst designations that we also print.
Left out
That 'routine assessment' has no review date, has had none since April 2019, and that the office confirmed both facts to us in writing on the same day it sent them that statement.
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They Buriedthis newspaper1,147 Passes Over Nine Years. The Catalogue Never Issued A Number.
Sued for nine years of daily summaries, got the cataloguing rule and the routing sheet with them, and put the rule, the sheet and the hold on the page in full.
Had that we did not
Rule 4-C entire, the routing sheet entire, the pass count for every year, and the office's reply unedited.
Left out
We spent four years and £41,000 of readers' money getting an object's whereabouts and we still cannot tell a reader what it looks like, because the radar cross-section tables were withheld and we did not appeal them at the same time. That was a scheduling decision made in this office and it has cost us a year. — V. Ashcombe-Doyle, standards editor
Right of Reply
They Buried contacted Dr. Estella Ruthven-Amadi, Chief, Orbital Object Catalogue Office on 30 July 2026, in writing, with the complete draft, the figure, and scans of every document quoted; no deadline was imposed. Replied 19 August 2026. Printed in full and unedited, including the parts about this newspaper.
You have written a careful story about a filing practice and presented it as a story about an object, and I would like to separate those two things, because your readers will not do it for themselves.
First, the facts you have asked me to confirm, which I confirm. Rule 4-C exists and you have transcribed it correctly. It was invoked in respect of the designation you name on 11 April 2019. That invocation has not been lifted. No review date was set at the time and none has been set since. Rule 4-C has been invoked nine times since this catalogue was established. I will not tell you what the other eight are, and I want to be clear that I am declining rather than being unable — I have the list in front of me as I write this.
Now the part where I think you are wrong.
You use the word 'never' as though promulgation were something the object is owed. A catalogue number is not an acknowledgement that a thing is up there. Our sensors acknowledge that. One thousand one hundred and forty-seven times, by your count and by ours, our sensors have acknowledged it, and the record of every one of those acknowledgements is now in your hands because you asked us for it and we gave it to you. A designation is not a statement that a thing exists. It is a statement that we know what it is. We do not know what it is. Issuing a number would be a claim of knowledge I am not in possession of, and I would have thought a newspaper that publishes a column called what we could not establish would recognise the position.
On the review date. You have made a great deal of a handwritten line. I would make a great deal of it too if I thought it were sinister. What it is, is an officer declining to promise a date he could not keep. There is no analytical work scheduled on this designation because there is no analytical work available to do: we have exhausted correlation against every declared launch, every known break-up, and every fragment catalogue we have access to, and the answer each time is that nothing matches. A review, in the sense you mean it, would consist of a person re-reading the same negative result. I am not going to schedule that annually so that a newspaper can be reassured by the calendar entry.
And yet I accept the criticism your public editor has not made and I will make it for her. A rule that requires review at intervals set by the officer invoking it is a rule that permits an interval of forever. That is a drafting fault and it is ours. I have asked for section 4 to be reopened. If it is amended I will tell you, and if it is not amended I will tell you that too.
What I will not do is let you have the sentence I can feel you reaching for. The object is uncorrelated. Uncorrelated means we cannot match it to anything we know of. It does not mean we have matched it to something we are not telling you about. Those are different sentences and only one of them is mine.
Published unedited under our right-of-reply guarantee.
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