Posted on 02/11/2009 8:54:32 PM PST by gandalftb
For decades, space experts have warned of orbits around the planet growing so crowded that two satellites might one day slam into one another.
It happened Tuesday. And the whirling fragments could pose a threat to the International Space Station, though officials said the risk was now small.
“This is a first, unfortunately,” Nicholas L. Johnson, chief scientist for orbital debris at NASA. Two communications satellites — one Russian, one American — cracked up. In the aftermath, military radars on the ground tracked large amounts of debris going into higher and lower orbits.
“Nothing to this extent” has ever happened before, Mr. Johnson said. “We’ve had three other accidental collisions between what we call catalog objects, but they were all much smaller than this,”.
The American satellite was an Iridium. Iridium Satellite, said the satellite weighed about 1,200 pounds and that its body was more than 12 feet long, not including large solar arrays.
In a statement, the company said that it had “lost an operational satellite” on Tuesday, apparently after it collided with “a nonoperational” Russian satellite.
“Although this event has minimal impact on Iridium’s service,” the statement added, “the company is taking immediate action to address the loss.”
“There are actually debris from this event which we believe are going through space station altitude already,” he said. The risk to the station, Mr. Johnson added, “is going to be very, very small.” In the worst case, he said, “We’ll just dodge them if we have to. It’s the small things you can’t see that are the ones that can do you harm.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
It will be interesting to follow this over the next months or years. I wonder how far along laser particle weapon technology is these days...
The Iridium satellites share a similar polar orbit with Russian communication birds. If you look at the tracks, an uncontrolled Russian satellite could easily drift into the track of an Iridium satellite.
I think we can also assume that the Russian satellite was in a decaying orbit.
Has more to do with Mass and acceleration, some particles will go into a higher orbit because they have more energy. Others will go slower, and fall into the atmosphere. Think of it like a marble in a funnel, if you keep swirling or swirl harder the Marble will go higher up in the come. A gravity well is a similar idea.
Exactly. The number of results depends on the number of fragments each broke into..the speed of each fragment, the mass of each fragment, the angle of impact.....
Yikes....my long forgotten Engineering 203 DiffEq just can't contemplate this any further.
Never mind that this was Iridium #33 - no conspiracy here - everything normal.
Back to sleep everyone.
time to restart Project Hefty. Launch huge nets to grab space junk and then hope they burn up on re-entry
My guess is that a lot of debris floating around smaller than 3.9 inches across that would go right through just about anything we can throw up there - assuming a closing speed greater than 88'/sec!!!
...think of a rock and your windshield at 60mph.
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do you know if this collision had been forecast as possible or otherwise anticipated?
However, even those particles and fragment sent “up” - at one side of their orbit - would be forced to a lower orbit at the other side of the new orbit. Likewise, the chunks of satellite debris forced “down” on this side of the orbit (at the collision point) go higher on the other side. So, eventually, all parts hit more air resistance on at least half of the new orbits, and so the new orbits degrade faster, and the fragments are removed faster than the original satellites.
Of course, in the meaantime, the fragments are a greater threat: they form a much larger "cloud" of potential secondary collision targets.
But it seems that - unlike the hype about high-speed collisions on a recent show (Discovery or History Channel) very, very few collisions would have a “relative speed” of extremely high velocities: Only the polar orbiting satellites would have a high speed difference with a satellite more normal equatorial orbit. And, since the three most frequent launch station have different latitudes (US, France, and Soviet Union), the three resulting “normal” orbit patterns intersect each other even less often.
So it would appear that most collisions are going to happen with a speed difference of "tens of miles per hour" not "tens of thousands of miles per hour"
That may very well be true, but I saw a photo once, in "NASA Tech Briefs" if I recall correctly, of a small divot out of a Space Shuttle windshield which was determined to have been caused by an orbiting speck of paint.
The odds of this happening are simply to high to take seriously. The fact that this took place over Siberia seems more than a coincidence. Additionally the debris trail seems to have settled into a high and lower trajectory and from what I can tell similar to the trajectory of the original orbits. It would seem to me a collision as described would produce 3 rather than 2 debris fields in different trajectories.
So my theory is that the Ruski’s were tracking these objects and were able to pinpoint a date when they would be close enough to each other to plausibly claim a collusion. But in fact they brought them down simultaneously with a weapon, most likely, a particle beam but something less sophisticated such as a sub orbital multi-warheaded ABM would also be a possibility. I'd be very interested to see data on the debris field.
Doing this now makes a lot of political sense for Russia and I'm sure the story will die or be ridiculed if it gets any legs. It will be very interesting if it happens again...
“I think the Ruski’s successfully tested a killer satellite.
Well, yes, but that was 25 years ago.”
(manned spaced flights becoming satellites non inclusive?)
“Bill the Russians for the loss. They should be held accountable.”
What is the accountability? Was it a head on or a rear end?
Laugh or not, I’m sure some such as Lloyds of London consider it (and whether metric/inches were involved — remember that!?).
(wouldn’t want to lose a toolbox and be held accountable for the loss of satellite TV...)
To others suggesting this is some Russian kill. No...its not. Its not one in a trillion. Its a decaying orbit Russian satellite that strayed.
US Iridium satellite collides with secret Russian military craft above Siberia
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