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A "Black Box" For Space Debris?
jonerik writes: "Space.com has this piece on engineers at El Segundo's Aerospace Corporation, who are trying to create a black box - similar to those used in civilian, commercial, and military aircraft - for satellites and other pieces of equipment bound for space, with the aim of trying to figure out why certain pieces of space debris survive reentry largely intact while others burn up in the atmosphere. The box - about the size and shape of a paperback book - would sit dormant perhaps for years and reactivate when a thermal switch senses the temperature rising, signalling reentry. 'Loaded with ultra-small sensors, including accelerometers and a Global Positioning System navigation chip, the box would record the stresses and strains on the hardware during its fall from space.'"
Just attach microjets to the black box and propel it toward the Earth's atmosphere. that way you won't have to wait for gravity to do its work.
I can picture a boardroom at NASA
Hmmmmm.... We could build on 30+ years of research from the respective space agencies of France, the (then) Soviet Union, the United States and maybe a few others, then try to collect first-hand data via a transmitting device placed in some actual orbital craft which are performing uncontrolled re-entry. We could capture and track these data to see if we could correllate certain behaviours with re-entry breakup or lack thereof.
Or we could listen to a guy who throws sticks.