Debris is Shuttle's Biggest Threat

Masq666 writes "Tiny rocks, paint flecks and other fragments of junk whizzing around the Earth pose the greatest threat to the shuttles and the astronauts on board, according to the preliminary results of a new NASA risk study. Even coin sized fragments can cause great damage to a shuttle, and the damage can be lethal, if it hits the windows or the heat shield."

Comments

PlanetES

[.tekrox]

maybe you should have a watch of this Anime series -all to do with the lives of "Debree Collectors" quite relevant to this story indeed

Re:Easy Solution

[nurhussein]

No, no, no... shields are a defense mechanism against energy weapons. Space debris is knocked out of the way by the navigational deflector or main deflector dish. Get your fictional technology right!

Re:geosync?

[js7a]

The further-out geostatonary belt is called crowded, but only by people who have to point antennas. It is less cluttered with junk and the near-zero relative speeds of everything in it makes what little there is fairly safe.

The closer you get to the planet, the more crap there is. Some of it is really interesting crap, but it's still deadly crap.

Re:Why then

[NOLAChief]

Luck has little to do with it. Unmanned satellites have the advantage that they can be placed in orbits that are relatively clear of debris. Depending on the mission, I think (and my memory's pretty fuzzy right now) that some satellites have been rad hardened enough to survive in/near the Van Allen belts, an area that is naturally swept of debris.

Unfortunately, electronics are easier to rad harden than people, so the shuttle must fly in "riskier" orbits from a debris impact point of view. The shuttle is protected in two major ways that I know of: first, a box of space around the orbiter is constantly monitored by NORAD radar. If something enters that box, they assess it's threat to the orbiter and can order course corrections if necessary. This helps dodge a lot of bullets. Second, after the infamous paint fleck that took a chunk out of Challenger's window, flight rules were changed so that the orbiter is oriented with the main engines facing toward the direction of flight at all times. So much better to have a paint fleck put a hole in an ablative nozzle that isn't being used and that will get refitted anyway than have that same fleck cause an explosive decompression.