I’m not sure if ‘google’ has been accepted as a verb or not, but I think I’ve seen people used the experission ‘to google’ something.
Over the pass few days I have been googling the words “COSPAR Station Number” but I was not happy with the results until finally, with the help of Bruce MacDonald, Björn Gimle, and possibly Russell Eberst, I was able to find out, who should I ask for a COSPAR Station Number. I got Pierre’s email address from Björn and, after exchanging email few times with Pierre, finally today, I got my COSPAR Station Number, 8434. Thanks Björn, Bruce and Russell.
Here is what Pierre wrote about COSPAR World List of Satellite Tracking Stations in his email to one of the applicant from Tulsa Oklahoma.
COSPAR was established by the International Council of Scientific Union in oct 1958 following the International Geophysical Year of 1957-58. Each observing reporting site was given a 4-digit Nr. Slots were allocated to each country. Ex: 2…for GB, 3… for F, 4… for NL,….8… for USA.
That at least show the difference with the COSPAR ID for naming the satellites. The more info on COSPAR can be found here.
I did find from Google for example the website of Marco Langbroek, where he said “Since 2005 August 1, I operate Cospar satellite tracking station #4353 (see my SatTrackCam page).” In his SatTrackCam page, I saw the subtitle “Cospar station 4353 (formerly 4352)”, and this is what he wrote there:
SatTrackCam station Leiden is a relatively new tracking station in the network and has started operations at August 1, 2005. It is located in the town center of Leiden, the Netherlands, and initially received the Cospar station code # 4352. After a move to a new home in February 2006, it received the new designation Cospar 4353.The site coördinates (WGS84) are: 52° 09′ 14.8″ N, 4° 29′ 26.9″ E, +0 m asl. The site coördinates of the old location 4352 (WGS84) are: 52° 09′ 32.2″ N, 4° 29′ 19.8″ E, +5 m asl.
As you can find from Marco’s website, there are a lot of good satellite pictures and well documented reports. Please check it out yourself. However, I still don’t know where to find the registrar from Marco’s site.
Once I got the name of Pierre from Bruce and Björn, I then googled Pierre’s name, and I found out that Pierre’s name has also been mentioned in the 1998 version of Jeff’s article, which is being kept at a Romanian Weather Satellite Website that Google has picked up for me. I have cross-checked and I found that the same info was listed in the latest version that I maintain now. 
This is what Jeff wrote about Pierre:
The more ardent observers who were ‘members’ of the various professional observing programs such as Moonwatch and the English efforts under King-Hele and Pierre Neirinck, sent out predictions every week or so to fellow members via air mail.
Google also listed this entry:
SatTrackCam Leiden
station (b)log: February 2006 – Jan 15Pierre Neirinck has assigned my new location the Cospar ID number 4353. The coordinates of the new site are: WGS84: 52d 09′ 14.84″ N, 4d 29′ 26.90″ E …
sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2006_02_01_sattrackcam_archive.html – 39k – Cached – Similar pages
As you can see, this is the first time I found in Google that Pierre Neirinck has assigned the Cospar ID number to someone. That was what I need but I didn’t find it when I googled the words “COSPAR ID number”, “COSPAR Station number”, and the like.
What I’m going to do here is to provide the correct Meta Tags, so at least when someone wants to get the new COSPAR Satellite Tracking Station number, they don’t need to go over the lost list of Cospar meeting, solicitation of papers etc, but go directly to this site and then contact, Pierre Neirinck.
Did Google have more information on Pierre? Certainly. At this site, I found Pierre’s picture. Too bad it is written in French, which I could not understand. But at least, I could guess what it was saying there. The most important thing, however, is the fact that I would not miss Pierre if I have a chance to see him next time. I hope Google will index this page correctly and people don’t need to wait 3, 4 days just to find out, who should they call.
Thanks, Pierre for assigning this station number for me.
8434 HUNTSVILLE +34.6553 86.9292W 192m
Now is the time for me to learn how to use IOD format.
Popularity: 10% [?]
