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SatelliteIndex

Satellite · NORAD 24872 · COSPAR 1997-034D

IRIDIUM 18

DecayedPayloadLEOCommunications derived

Altitude now

—

object decayed

Velocity

—

Inclination

86.35°

Period

87.3 min

87.3 min

Perigee

128km

Apogee

157km

orbit unavailableNo orbital element set on file — decayed 19 Aug 2018.· Metadata updated 9 h ago

Live position

Live position

Live position unavailable — this object re-entered the atmosphere on 19 Aug 2018 and is no longer tracked.

Mission

Mission & classification

Mission type derived
Communications
Object type
Payload
SATCAT ops status
Decayed [D]
Radar cross-section
3.3 m²
Constellation membership derived
Iridium NEXT via name_pattern

CelesTrak groups

Not listed in any CelesTrak group.

Aliases

  • IRIDIUM 18Celestrak Satcat

Ownership

Operator & country

Operator
Iridium Communications
SATCAT owner code
US · United States
Country
United States US

Launch

Launch

Launch page →
Launch date
09 Jul 1997
COSPAR launch id
1997-034
Launch site
Vandenberg Space Force Base (Western Range), California

Objects from the same launch · 8

Change log

History

No changes recorded since first ingestion on 11 Sept 2026 18:54 UTC. Status, orbit class, name and ownership changes are logged here as sources are re-ingested.

Regulatory

UN registration

UN Register of Objects Launched into Outer Space (UNOOSA) — connector planned, not yet ingested; registration unavailable

Transparency

Sources & provenance

All sources →

No source is linked to this record yet — the catalogue row exists but no provenance entry has been written for it.

Field provenance

No field-level provenance recorded.

Timeline

Events

All events →

No events detected for this object yet. Launches, decays and orbit changes are generated by the derived-analytics connector.

Reference

Identifiers

NORAD catalogue number
24872
COSPAR / international designator
1997-034D
SatelliteIndex id
sat_01M28X3JQ5W8GYWNW7XWXCWZ26
Canonical slug
iridium-18-24872

Orbit class, mission type and constellation membership are derived by SatelliteIndex (Communications) — see the methodology. Positions are propagated estimates, not tracking measurements; never use them for conjunction assessment.