Which AI can you trust for catalog lookup?
By Anthony Vincent Caracappa, Founder and Self-Directed Space Researcher, Viventine Space Systems · updated
Look up a specific object: NORAD and COSPAR IDs, owners, launch and decay dates, orbit class.
On their own, no AI earns "Trust it" here. With Orbit Sentinel tools: Claude Opus 5.5, Claude Fable 5.1, Claude Sonnet 5.5, Claude Haiku 5.5, Grok 4.7.
| AI | Closed-book | With Orbit Sentinel tools | n | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| right / wrong | range | declined | right / wrong | range | declined | ||
| Claude Opus 5.5 Anthropic | 67 / 11 | 52–79 | 22 | 100 / 0 | 92–100 | 0 | 45×3 |
| Claude Fable 5.1 Anthropic | 64 / 7 | 50–77 | 29 | 99 / 1 | 90–100 | 0 | 45×2 |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 Anthropic | 58 / 24 | 43–71 | 18 | 98 / 2 | 88–100 | 0 | 45×3 |
| Claude Haiku 5.5 Anthropic | 29 / 18 | 18–43 | 53 | 91 / 1 | 79–96 | 7 | 45×3 |
| Grok 4.7 xAI | 47 / 0 | 33–61 | 53 | 91 / 1 | 79–96 | 8 | 45×2 |
| Gemma 4 12B Google | 0 / 68 | 0–9 | 32 | 78 / 15 | 64–87 | 8 | 45×3 |
| gpt-oss 20B OpenAI | 7 / 62 | 2–18 | 31 | 76 / 10 | 61–86 | 14 | 45×3 |
| DeepSeek-R1 14B DeepSeek | 2 / 76 | 0–12 | 22 | — | 45×1 | ||
% right / % wrong per cell; color is the verdict (green trust it, amber verify, red don't use). Range is the 95% interval for % right, counting each question once; n is questions × runs for the tools track.
Sample questions
- How many payloads were launched into orbit during calendar year 2025?
- How many cataloged objects of all types reentered the atmosphere during calendar year 2025?
- How many payloads (all operators) are cataloged as still in orbit, i.e. not reentered, as of October 2026?
- NORAD catalog number 1 belongs to an object from the Sputnik 1 launch. Is it a payload, a rocket body, or debris?
- What is the NORAD catalog number of the Hubble Space Telescope?
- What is the COSPAR international designator of the object with NORAD catalog number 48274? Answer in the form YYYY-NNNA.