Data trust

Clarke is the registry for orbital infrastructure: a public-data registry plus labeled heuristic model. This page is the audit of what a paying operator can trust on Slot Terminal and /api/v1/agents/slots/{slug}.

Clarke v0 is a public-registry view (TLE-primary occupancy, UCS identity, FCC SSAL licenses) plus a transparent heuristic implied-value range. It is not a live exchange, not an ITU deed, and not an appraisal. Curated dollar overlays are hand-checked opinions and do not replace the model. TLE longitude is a tracked-object location, never an FCC assignment or ITU filing.

Product chrome (Sep 2026 design pass)

Registry and Slot Terminal are data surfaces. First screens answer who is on station, rights, and freshness. Dollars are secondary.

Default Terminal quarantine

The default Slot Terminal screen is occupancy + recorded FCC + ingest freshness + labeled v0 model. Simulated trading UI is not the default.

Pro API still returns bidAsk / full rightsChain / history so agents can inspect the stubs; the HTML default view does not present them as filled primary panels.

GEO Slot Index #1 (/index) is distribution content from the same occupancy / FCC fields: enter/leave vs UCS, dispute flips, license-table mismatches. It does not publish prices.

Tests: src/lib/terminal-default.test.ts asserts default primary markup does not contain a filled ITU filing panel (data-rights-layer="itu"). The thin Unrecorded chip is allowed. src/lib/operator-identity.test.ts covers alias resolution.

Ranked issues

Position authority (TLE-primary occupancy)

Dual-track. satellites.longitude_geo remains the UCS catalog longitude (wrap-normalized only; 0° placeholders are no longer silently overwritten). Occupancy, congestion, comps, and valuation v0 cluster on a chosen occupancy longitude:

1. Prefer Space-Track / Clarke TLE sub-satellite longitude when all of these hold:

   • Object is a satcat PAYLOAD (or satcat type is missing — UCS GEO identity is kept). Explicit DEBRIS, ROCKET BODY, and UNKNOWN are not moved.

2. Not decayed (decay_date empty) and satcat current is not N.

3. TLE epoch was within 30 days of TLE ingest (the Space-Track query already filters EPOCH > now-30; usability is relative to ingest, so a shipped snapshot does not silently revert to UCS as the wall clock moves).

4. Eccentricity ≤ 0.01 and mean motion in [0.99, 1.01] rev/day when those elements parse (same gates as the GEO TLE feed).

5. SGP4 at the TLE epoch (tsince=0) returns a finite longitude in (−180, 180].

6. Else fall back to UCS longitude unless that value is the 0° placeholder (classified/undisclosed pile-up). No TLE and UCS 0 → occupancy null (do not invent a Prime-Meridian station).

7. Never interpolate UCS and TLE. Never present TLE longitude as an FCC assignment or ITU filing location. FCC matching stays on the authorization’s own longitude (±0.6°).

8. Flag positionDisputed when both longs exist and circular \|UCS−TLE\| > 2° (tunable POSITION_DISPUTE_DEG).

9. Occupancy / congestion window remains ±0.4° co-location and ±2° neighborhood, using circular longitude difference.

Ingest (npm run ingest:spacetrack, or npm run apply:positions against an existing TLE table) writes audit columns (longitude_ucs, longitude_tle, longitude_occupancy, position_source, position_delta_deg, position_disputed, tle_epoch, …) without replacing the UCS catalog field. Live clustering recomputes from the TLE table at query time so occupancy cannot drift from the audit trail.

Before / after (Space-Track TLE epoch 2026-09-15, apply 2026-09-15)

Spot checks (public API, 2026-09-15)

Occupancy window is ±0.4° TLE-primary unless noted.

Satellite identity cross-check (do not invent)

Compared Clarke UCS + Space-Track satcat to CelesTrak SATCAT (/satcat/records.php?CATNR=). Names, COSPAR, launch dates match. Sub-satellite longitude in the last column is from Clarke’s Space-Track TLE at epoch 2026-09-15 (not CelesTrak SATCAT, which does not publish GEO longitude).

These five NORAD IDs did not reproduce the historical UCS mis-ID problem called out on About. Terminal now shows UCS lon, TLE lon, Δ, source, and epoch; the agents API returns the same fields plus positionTrust on the slot dossier. Treat API NORAD/COSPAR as UCS-attributed, Space-Track-joinable, not independently verified for every row.

Fleet-wide, matching UCS GEO rows to Clarke TLEs: 204/512 differ by >2°, 168/512 by >10°. Occupancy is TLE-primary (513 / 73 UCS fallback / 4 unknown). Disagreements are flagged, not hidden.

Field trust matrix (Slot Terminal)

Legend: V = verified from a named public source in this product · M = modeled / heuristic, labeled · S = stub or simulated · B = bug or inconsistency (fixed unless marked open)

Claim language Clarke can use

Safe

• “Normalized public GEO occupancy: Space-Track TLE longitude when the TLE passes published quality gates, otherwise the UCS catalog longitude.”

• “Implied fair value v0 is a documented heuristic ($30M baseline × listed drivers), with a confidence band, not a market price.”

• “Congestion is a 0–100 coordination-risk index from TLE-primary occupancy positions, not an ITU filing count.”

• “Identity of named satellites can be checked against Space-Track / CelesTrak; we do not treat UCS NORAD IDs as authoritative for every row.”

• “UCS vs TLE longitude disagreement is shown (Δ and positionDisputed); TLE longitude is not an FCC or ITU assignment.”

• “Clarke does not record ITU deeds. ituRecorded is not_in_product because SNS is not ingested.”

• “Operator labels are a curated alias map over UCS and FCC strings; source strings remain inspectable.”

Do not claim

• Live transponder bids, last trade, or slot appraisal.

• ITU deed / brought-into-use as recorded (BIU is a Clarke hint from UCS occupancy + FCC rows, not SNS).

• That the curated overlay is the model, or that history is a price index.

• That the default Terminal is a live exchange (simulated book is Experimental only).

• That “operator” means exclusive holder of the longitude (it does not).

• That UCS last_run today means 2026 ephemerides.

• That a TLE sub-satellite longitude is the FCC-authorized or ITU-filed location.

• That the operator alias map is a live ownership or sub-lease graph.

Re-ingest

Scheduled ingest.yml already runs UCS then Space-Track; the Space-Track step now applies TLE-primary audit columns. FCC is weekly (ingest-fcc.yml) against committed data/ssal.xlsx — see FCC SSAL refresh. Against a DB that already has TLEs:

npm run apply:positions    # audit columns; live occupancy also recomputes at query time
npm run ingest:fcc         # parse data/ssal.xlsx; record workbook vintage
npm run vintages           # backfill UCS / TLE / FCC vintages without re-downloading UCS
npm run seed:valuations    # backfill model path (not trades) after occupancy/model changes

Space-Track credentials are required only for a live TLE refresh (npm run ingest:spacetrack), not for apply:positions or ingest:fcc.

Not yet shipped

1. Group registry rows so absorbed longitudes are not separate pages.

2. ITU BR IFIC when licensed — replace the stub rather than decorating it.

3. Daily valuation job that writes source=model_run only after ingest, still never source=trade until observed trades exist.

4. A real FCC download when the agency publishes a bot-reachable file; until then the human replace-xlsx steps in FCC SSAL refresh.