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Space Station & Shuttle Evade Debris
T.Hobbes writes: "There's an article at the BBC about the shuttle had to take evasive maneuvers to avoid the close (5km) transit of some rocket debris, and how the fuel consumed has cut short the shuttle's stay in orbit by one day. NASA also has an article about it." I know that minor maneuvers are common, but this one seems like a rather major move. Anyone want to bet on how long it will be before we have to establish some sort of clean-up effort in space?
The Slashdot article doesn't make it quite clear enough that they weren't trying to keep the shuttle clear of the debris - they were trying to keep the space station clear of debris. That's why it consumed so much fuel (they had to budge the entire space station 3/4 of a mile.) It's easy to move the shuttle, much harder to use the shuttle as a tugboat.
What's your damage, Heather?
There is a more detailed article here.
James White wrote about this problem in 1964.
I could easily believe that someone wrote about the problem before that.
Deadly Litter (c) 1964 by James White,
ISBN 0-345-29640-0
A.
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
That's what you get when you leave your garbage in orbit! ... I dunno what they were thinking.
As with most issues in the space program, this is not as simple as it sounds. The debris in question is an old Soviet-era rocket booster, which travels into orbit along with whatever payload it's carrying. Unless some action is taken, it will circle the earth for hundreds of years until the extremely rareified upper atmosphere creates enough drag to bring it down. In order to remove these objects from orbit, you would have to install a retro-rocket system to bring it down on command, which would introduce complexity and cost quite a lot of weight. The debris has to come down somewhere, and if the de-orbiting device malfunctions, it will come down over Chicago rather than some isolated patch of the Pacific. Furthermore, most of the debris that people are worried about are not huge boosters, but tiny rice-grain-sized specs, which are impossible to track and account for.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
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Fuck 'im up, Tim! His views are invalid! -Pirate Corp$
Space junk really isn't that much of an issue since its orderly - Im pretty sure they have known about this object for a long time [years], and since the trajectory and orbit of all known space junk is static, noboby is going to be surprised by flying banana peel. However, when you get more than one object large enough to have gravitaional pull on its own, I suppose the calculations will become more and more complex and you end up having to put up some serious timex watches in stuff you put up there. When that time comes, a small british company has already made a tiny inexpensive cleaning bot for earth-orbiting debris [BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_7 97000/797338.stm]
/penhead
back in the late 90's nasa was working with the generation of aerogels to make a "space sponge" of a sorts. a huge frame holding a cube of aerogel inside to basically place in a low orbit, allow it to "sweep" for a while until it starts to gain a certain amount of damage and then de-orbit it.
I remember a huge segment on it from the show "beyond 2000" (the best tv show discovery ever had, and the morons cancelled it replacing it with a ton of animal crap)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It most certainly does. Check your facts.
> and why it wasn't placed in a geosync
Geosync is the most crowded orbital position we have. This is the last place you want to be if you are trying to avoid junk. Check your facts.
> or a higher circular orbit.
As it stands the shuttle is strained to the limit to get to the station. Infact Columbia (the heaviest of the four shuttles) can't reach the station where it is. Move it any higher, and you wouldn't be able to get to it. Check your facts.
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Apparently, NASA is working on setting up cleaning efforts, and all the space agencies have agreed not to drop garbage off in space anymore. NASA is working on making their hulls more micro-meteorite proof due to all the floating garbage. To test new hull designs, they have the four most powerful guns in the world, which shoot pea sized bullets at various types of hull designs, at 15 000 m/s. That's in the latest issue of discover.
As it stands the shuttle is strained to the limit to get to the station. Infact Columbia (the heaviest of the four shuttles) can't reach the station [space.com] where it is. Move it any higher, and you wouldn't be able to get to it.
Height is not the problem at all, Columbia can easily reach the current altitude of the ISS. What Columbia can't easily do is reach the orbit of the ISS. The two sound the same, but they aren't really. To explain: (highly simplified)
A given booster can launch it's maximum weight to a given altitude launching at 0 degrees inclination, that is due East. (In the same plane as the Equator.) At that angle the booster gets the maximum help from the Earth's spin. As the angle of inclination increases (or decreases) the help from the Earth's spin goes down, and so does the payload to a given altitude. Minimum payload to a given altitude occurs at +/- 180 degrees, or due West. (You have to 'slow down' relative to the Earth before 'speeding up' to orbital velocity.)
The ISS is in a 52 degree orbit so that the Russians can reach it from their launch sites. The orbits they can reach are limited because of where the stages of the booster will drop early in the flight. Low inclinations require either dropping the stages on China, or choosing trajectories that require so much booster energy that useful payload drops dramatically. Since the Russian modules had to be launched more-or-less fully equipped, ISS had to be in an orbit they could effectively reach, thus causing the US to accept a major payload hit.
After her latest overhaul Columbia can in fact reach the station with a minimal payload. (Which is even specified in the article you referenced.) Check your facts.
Geosync is the most crowded orbital position we have. This is the last place you want to be if you are trying to avoid junk.
Geosync is crowded because for a given 'slot' (a chunk of orbit that can see directly a specific spot on the ground) there is a lot of competition. Also while there are a number of dead sattelites in the vicinity, there is almost no booster stages, debris from breakups, or 'lost' hardware. In fact geosync is highly desireable for debris avoidance because the relative velocities and absolute debris density are much lower. Check your facts.