Posted on 02/12/2009 5:40:00 AM PST by Freeport
Again from heavens-above.com:
http://heavens-above.com/
Satellite collision:
At 16:56 UTC on Feb. 10th, Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251 collided over northern Siberia.
Many hundreds of pieces of debris are expected to result, and many are already being tracked.
The threat to the ISS and Shuttle are minimal, but the danger to other satellites in higher orbits is still being assessed. Please follow these two links for 3-D graphic displays of the collision by Dan Deak.
View from above:
http://www.obsat.com/images/Ir33coll_top.gif
View from the side:
http://www.obsat.com/images/Ir33coll_side.gif
Rather remarkable we both linked to the same heavens-above.com page at nearly the same exact time. Mine was ahead of yours by a mere 10 seconds.
Given that it can happen, I share your pessimism that it did happen accidentally, especially in consideration of Russia's new belligerence and their use of cyber attacks against Georgia.
Hopefully, the users are encrypting their voice and data. One of the big problems with Iridium is that it's transceivers are analog. It was obsolete well before the last of it's satellites were lofted and Motorola knew it....
Also note where it happened: over northern Siberia
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2183962/posts?page=21#21
I can’t possibly be the first:
OBAMA’S FAULT!
Was this collision an accident or is Russian practicing or demonstrating anti-satellite capability?
It's getting very crowded up there. Here's a graphic that shows just how crowded.
http://www.thetech.org/exhibits/online/satellite/4/4a/4a.1.html
So the thousands of objects up there are not evenly distributed at all, and it is getting crowded. The AF tracks everything, but probably only takes the time/computer power to do orbital predictions for its own satellites. (looking for potential collisions with others) It becomes a rather large combinatorial problem to check paths for intercept between any two arbitrary objects.
I actually live near the G-burg battlefield and have seen the fused Minie balls myself. The difference is that these collissions resulted from massed volleys of sub-sonic rounds fired directly at each other at relatively short range, thereby increasing the odds of collision. Satellites, on the other had, are pretty much solitary bodies, traveling in singluar orbits. The odds against an accidental collision are much, much greater.
There was a recent statement out of Russia, to the effect that "...we had a laser cannon before the Americans."
14,000 was the figure before the Chinese tested their antisatellite capability by blowing up one of their satellites a year or so ago. The total now is estimated to be above 22,000! With this collision, it may be over 30,000.
We had better soon develop some kind of shielding for our craft or it won't be long before spaceflight becomes way too dangerous.
Had the Russian satellite made any orbital changes for a while? Ignoring the chance that the Russians did this on purpose, the Iridium still did have some maneuvering capability and was responsible for not running into a known non-maneuvering satellite. The statement I quoted would be like me explaining to a cop how a parked car slammed into my car while I was driving.
Assuming they had the capability, all the Russians had to do was either raise or lower the orbit of their Cosmos 2215. They might have chosen this particular satellite because its orbit happened to be intersecting with the U.S. Iridium’s orbit directly over Siberia where they could perhaps better monitor the collision. See my post #34 for the graphic.
IRIDIUM 33:
Epoch (UTC): 03:48:05, Thursday, February 12, 2009
Eccentricity: 0.0010587
Inclination: 86.391°
Perigee height: 776 km
Apogee height: 791 km
Right Ascension of ascending node: 120.6806°
Argument of perigee: 81.0572°
Revolutions per day: 14.32479644
Mean anomaly at epoch: 279.1894°
Orbit number at epoch: 59767
http://heavens-above.com/orbit.aspx?satid=24946&lat=0&lng=0&loc=Unspecified&alt=0&tz=CET
______________________________________________
COSMOS 2215:
Epoch (UTC): 02:00:40, Thursday, February 12, 2009
Eccentricity: 0.0024852
Inclination: 74.0399°
Perigee height: 767 km
Apogee height: 803 km
Right Ascension of ascending node: 14.7272°
Argument of perigee: 157.0294°
Revolutions per day: 14.32047327
Mean anomaly at epoch: 203.2039°
Orbit number at epoch: 81778
http://heavens-above.com/orbit.aspx?lat=0&lng=0&alt=0&loc=Unspecified&TZ=CET&satid=22675
LLS
...which is demonstrably false.
True, the odds are very remote but... There are something like 9000 to 14000 objects in orbit (depending on what size you go down to). There are only so many “good” orbital trajectories.
Imagine all those satellites distributed over the earth’s surface. The earth is 510 million square kilometers, and the lower 48 is 8 million, which is 1.57% of the earth’s surface. 1.57% of the satellite population (high end of your range) is 220 satellites of the lower 48. If those were airplanes, it would be a tiny fraction of the number we have. But aircraft tend to concentrate (and crash) near airports, and are limited to a thin band of a couple of miles of altitude. Midair collisions away form airports do happen, as in Brazil a few years back. But that was tow aircraft on exactly the same GPS controlled altitude and path.
No, this just doesn’t pass the smell test, and I think they’re hiding the truth on this. If it were a satellite taken out by a small debris, I’d be far less skeptical.
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