Talk:Kosmos (satellite)

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Kosmos or Cosmos

Altough the name Kosmos was used historically by the press in the West the correct transliteration of the cyrillic К is C so Космос would be Cosmos in the roman alphabet. Is there a Wikipedia rule that mandates to maintain this term based on historical issues? Tom Paine (talk) 12:12, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, it isn't; as I understand it, both transliterations can be considered correct, and under the transliteration scheme used by Wikipedia, "К" becomes "K". See WP:RUS. --W. D. Graham _{(previously GW)} 13:35, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Who assigns these numbers?

A question: who assigns the "Kosmos" numbers? Is it the Russians themselves, or is this designation assigned by the U.S. or some other body? For example, Kosmos 2499 was not announced publicly to the rest of the world, who just gave it the name "Object E" for some time. At what point did it become Kosmos 2499 to the rest of the world, and how? -- Impsswoon (talk) 12:02, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, that's not how it works. The Russians publicly identify the satellite as Kosmos 2499 and always have done. It has never been named "Object E" by Russia or by anyone else - it just usually takes a few days for USSTRATCOM/NORAD/COSPAR and anyone else who tracks the satellites to work out which object is which. While they are still trying to work out which is which they will refer to the objects by either their catalogue number or their International Designator (ID). In the case of Kosmos 2499 it was the fifth object catalogued from the 28th launch of 2014 to reach orbit, and hence its ID is 2014-028E - Object E of launch 28. --W. D. Graham 23:14, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Flight number analogy

Could the "Kosmos" designation be described as being somewhat analogous to "flight numbers" assigned by airlines? A flight number is distinct from the tail number of the specific aircraft used on a particular route, and the aircraft number may change periodically, while the flight number remains the same. At one time I heard the Soviet Union used Kosmos alternate designations to confuse foreign intelligence services, but the actual purpose may have been more benign, i.e., to catalogue their space assets in an orderly manner. — Quicksilver^{T @}

No, the actual purpose was to confuse foreign intelligence services (and the Soviet people as well, since failed misions were also dubbed "Kosmos", to obscure the failure). To catalogue space assets (regardless of the country) in an orderly manner ru:Главный каталог космических объектов Системы контроля космического пространства is used, similar to the US Satellite Catalog Number 79.139.146.178 (talk) 16:28, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]