[3] COSPAR subsumed the first designation system, devised at Harvard University.
That system used letters of the Greek alphabet to designate artificial satellites.
The first satellite to receive a new-format designator was Luna E-6 No.2, 1963-001B, although some sources, including the NSSDC website, retroactively apply the new-format designators to older satellites, even those no longer in orbit at the time of its introduction.
[1] The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC), part of NASA, maintain two catalogs that provide additional information on the launchers and payloads associated with the designators.
For example, the satellite GOMX-3, launched on an H-II Transfer Vehicle on August 19, 2015, from Tanegashima Space Center in Japan, is designated COSPAR ID 1998-067HA, because it first arrived on the International Space Station from where it was later launched.