I imagine there must be a list of all the satellites ever launched and their coordinates. I can't find it on Google.
My question is: What is the name of the 'register' that keeps track of all the satellites?
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1$\begingroup$ This is a really interesting question and is a little tricky to answer; there are catalogues of launches, and catalogues of objects in (or once were in) orbit which includes rocket bodies and random bits and pieces (scheduled or otherwise) in addition to "all the satellites". So I think a good answer will list more than one. Some private ones (and some public ones) will have "secret" satellites that official/public ones won't include. It might be a good candidate for a community Wiki if nobody steps up to write a thorough answer. $\endgroup$– uhohJul 25, 2019 at 1:01
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2 Answers
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I think there are several, public and private. Each space-faring country is going to keep its own registry. From googling, I've found the United Nations Register of Objects Launched into Outer Space, which has submissions as of yesterday. The page says
States and international intergovernmental organizations that agree to abide by the Convention are required to establish their own national registries and provide information on their space objects to the Secretary-General for inclusion in the United Nations Register.
The US Office of Space and Advanced Technology site says that they
maintains the official U.S. registry of objects launched into outer space
Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell also lists other satellite databases on his personal site. (Despite the site's appearances, McDowell is a world-class expert on satellite tracking and regularly submits orbital corrections. He's also very active on twitter.)
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In addition to the sources in @AlexAltair;s answer you can go to https://celestrak.org/satcat/search.php and click 'Raw Satcat Data' and save the very large text file, then read the SATCAT Format Documentation
Unless you know what year and launch you are looking for, you'll need a spreadsheet, a simple computer program, or a good text editor to look around because the list is pretty big.
Here is the line that represents the first part of the International Space Station, but I've removed a lot of spaces so that it is easier to read here
period incl apo peri
1998-067A 25544 *+ ISS (ZARYA) ISS 1998-11-20 TYMSC 92.8 51.6 418 409 399.0524
