Posted on 02/12/2009 5:40:00 AM PST by Freeport
WASHINGTON - Iridium Satellite LLC confirmed today that one of its satellites was destroyed Tuesday in an unprecedented collision with a spent Russian satellite and that the incident could result in limited disruptions of service.
According to an e-mail alert issued by NASA today, Russia's Cosmos 2251 satellite slammed into the Iridium craft at 11:55 a.m. EST (0455 GMT) over Siberia at an altitude of 490 miles (790 km). The incident was observed by the U.S. Defense Department's Space Surveillance Network, which later was tracking two large clouds of debris.
"This is the first time we've ever had two intact spacecraft accidentally run into each other," said Nicholas Johnson, chief scientist of NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "It was a bad day for both of them."
The collision appears to be the worst space debris event since China intentionally destroyed one of its aging weather satellites during a 2007 anti-satellite test, Johnson told SPACE.com. That 2007 event has since left about 2,500 pieces of debris in Earth orbit, but more time is needed to pin down the extent of Tuesday's satellite collision, he added.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Go to the Gettysburg battlefield and there are several musket balls that collided, on display.
I have trouble believing that Russia could pull this off on purpose, from a technical perspective.
Plus, the risk of a series of chain reaction collisions destroying basically all low earth orbit satellites would seem to me a reason that Russia would not do this even if they could.
If we had to start the satellite competion again from scratch, Russia would have no chance of keeping up with the US or China.
Well I agree that is hooey, but you'd need an infinite number of monkeys and/or time to demonstrate it. I think that is why God gave us the power to reason, instead of a calculator.
I dunno...traditionally, Russian physicists, mathematicians, engineers have always been some of the best in the world, going all the way back to the 19th century.
...and typewriters that never malfunction.
...and ribbons that never run out of ink.
...and monkeys that live forever.
...and monkeys that feel like typing instead of doing what monkeys do.
...and you count each individual "Shakesperean" word, not really expecting them to be in order.
...etc.
It's a platitude spoken as a truism.
Well, of course with enough time a monkey would randomly fix the broken typewriter, change the ink ribbons, and create more monkeys to do the same.
Come on, its all in the math ;-)
I agree completely. I was thinking more of their nation's crappy economic state, and the resulting deterioration of their space program.
I mean, we've spent countless billions developing technology to try to pull this off, and we're still only OK at it ourselves. I don't know that some gaggle of Russian geniuses could slap it together on the technological cheap.
Almost certainly an accident.
You're wrong there. Even now, the Russians have by far the greatest space launch capacity of any space-faring nation.
The Russian craft apparently was non-maneuverable.
From the main Space.com article at the top...
The 1,234-pound (560-kg) Iridium 33 satellite involved in the collision was launched in 1997; the 1,984-pound (900-kg) Russian satellite was launched in 1993 and presumed non-operational. It did not have a maneuvering system, NASA said.
http://www.space.com/news/090211-satellite-collision.html
If the Russians knew that their satellite was going to decay or its orbit changed, and then the collision occurred, wouldn’t Russia be held responsible in some court for malfeasance. I grant you that a clean up is impossible, but there is something quite wrong with business.
If the Russians knew that their satellite was going to decay or its orbit changed, and then the collision occurred, wouldn’t Russia be held responsible in some court for malfeasance. I grant you that a clean up is impossible, but there is something quite wrong with business.
Or are they going to chuck a bunch of 2002-caliber satellites up there?
No, it's an analogy that you are taking literally and it is perfectly true. An infinite iteration of chance would indeed accomplish this.
The fact that the collision occurred over Siberia also makes this suspicious.
“We’ve all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.” Robert Wilensky, April 1999.
One of my personal favorites.
If I remember correctly, Iridium has very close ties to the bin Laden family.
The state of technology has little to do with it. The Russian philosophy has always been "good enough to get the job done, and not much more."
If you want to talk about re-creating a satellite capability, the Russians are probably in the best position to do so.
The Russians built their massive spacelift capability precisely because they didn't have the same technology as us -- they made up for their technological shortcomings by being able to build and launch more, less-capable satellites instead.
In the process, they essentially wrote the book on space station operations, unmanned rendezvous, quick-turnaround low-cost launch, satellite mass-production, and many other impressive achievements.
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