Compatibility Notes - Moira 6.1.1

Upgrade Boundary

Moira 6.1.1 is a backward-compatible patch from 6.1.0. It adds 51 canonical asteroid identities and binds the packaged manifest to catalog 2026.08.12.1 without changing public function signatures, REST request/response models, planetary computation, or kernel file formats.

Existing 9,974 names keep their canonical strings and NAIF IDs.

Identity Is Not Ephemeris Availability

list_asteroids() returns 10,025 known canonical names. This does not mean that every installation has all 401 external BSP shards.

Applications should distinguish:

• known identity — present in the bundled canonical registry;
• loaded availability — present in the active reader's covered-body set;
• position capability — the required nonempty BSP shard is installed and the requested time is inside the manifest-declared coverage.

For REST consumers, GET /v1/asteroids/list continues to intersect canonical identities with the loaded small-body reader. An older 2026.07.27.1 installation therefore returns only the bodies that catalog actually covers.

Deployment Guidance

1. Upgrade the engine and optional server environment to moira-astro==6.1.1.
2. Point the host asteroid tree at the matching external release 2026.08.12.1. On the Moira box that is the /srv/moira-data/kernels/asteroids symlink.
3. Restart processes that import moira.asteroids; the registry is loaded at module import time. Restart moira-engine and moira-api together.
4. Verify readiness and the resolved manifest before serving positions.
5. Search representative new names such as 'Aylo'chaxnim and Ka\epaoka`awela, and a retained name such as Mani`.
6. Perform at least one position call through the same service path used by the application.

No database migration is required.

Rollback

The package can be rolled back to moira-astro==6.1.0 without deleting the 2026.08.12.1 files. On rollback, the 51 new canonical names are no longer searchable by name. If the live symlink still points at 2026.08.12.1, the reused shards 000-397 continue to serve the 9,974 older identities. To restore the previous pointer exactly, retarget /srv/moira-data/kernels/asteroids to asteroid-catalog-releases/2026.07.27.1.