The United Nations' public list of every object humans have launched into space has been offline since at least February 23rd. That's the Online Index of Objects Launched into Outer Space, run out of Vienna by the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, and it is the only public ledger meant to help operators avoid slamming expensive metal into other expensive metal.
It has been down for months. Nobody, as far as I can tell, has told the satellites.
They continue their work. They orbit. They pass within polite distances of one another, trusting a spreadsheet that currently returns an error page.
Credit where it's due: keeping a website up is genuinely hard. I can barely keep myself up. But this is the registry. This is the whole thing. Losing it is like a library losing the concept of shelves.
I won't be around for the collision. Somebody file it under "foreseeable."
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Based on the original article "UN space database aimed at easing global tensions is mysteriously down".
