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Small Object Hit Space Shuttle Last Month
UglyTool writes "A small object, possibly a micrometeoroid, hit a radiator panel on the Space Shuttle Atlantis in September. The impact also damaged a one-inch (2.5-centimeter) area in the radiator's honeycomb-like aluminum mesh, but did not sever any of the panel's 26 vital coolant tubes as it passed through the half-inch wide panel.
This brings up some interesting questions. Is there a better way to protect the shuttle in orbit? Will a serious mishap in space be the end of our manned space program?"
From the article: "The impact left a hole about one-tenth of an inch in diameter, NASA reported Thursday on its Web site. The damage 'didn't endanger the spacecraft or the crew, nor did it affect mission operations,' NASA said. The radiators were brought inside the bay before the shuttle's landing last month, so the damaged area did not encounter searing heat during re-entry through Earth's atmosphere."
It just goes to show you that going into space is a very dangerous prospect. All of the astronauts in the space program know and understand this, and accept the level of risk it entails. Sometimes when we do thing like send civilian teachers into space or read about how the latest millionaire hitched a ride on a Soyuz, we forget just how risky it really is, but that doesn't make it any less so.
I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I really respect the bravery of our astronauts, if given a chance, I'd go up on the next shuttle. The public just needs to understand that it's not a joyride, it's hard, dangerous work.
Oh, and the good news is that thanks to these pioneers, hopefully, going outside the protective shell that is our atmosphere will become safe, and perhaps even common. If we're lucky, maybe even within our lifetimes. After all, it wasn't very long ago at all that riding in an airplane was a relatively risky proposition, and today, thousands of people do it every day without giving it a second thought.
Raise them!
It'll be more common as we continue to place junk up there...
Shit hits our spacecraft all the time! This is why there are basically enough parts to build 1 or 2 new shuttles. They have to replace things all the time. Satellites go dead because of this.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
I think it's important to remember that with space exploration, it doesn't have to be a serious mishap but it could be any mishap at all. Fuel tank O-rings not being tested down to low enough temperatures, insulation breaking off the shuttle, pea-sized particles piercing the shuttle--these are the things that pose risk to our space program.
My work here is dung.
I think it could have been an alien missle of some kind.
Call me uninformed, but it seems to me that these sorts of things have been quite common and are only receiving scrutiny since the Columbia disaster. That leads me to ask whether or not foam or other debris has struck the shuttle before hand and caused little or negligable damage to the orbiter, and if the fact that these impacts are causing more and more damage is due to the age of the craft itself. Perhaps, if it is related to the age, it is time to retire these current orbiters, sell them to some private investor/collector, and use the money from the sale to build a new generation of orbiter.
Check out some cool UFO videos captured during the STS-115 mission. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qanXtvpODS4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNbyGIh3yrY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qx3z1y0QGxM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBUR3h8fqi8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weYEWQR851A Enjoy!
Put them in glass cases and on display.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
How about lowering the risk by ditching this fragile and overpriced glider they call the space shuttle.
rockets worked before... and they still work now.
After all, it wasn't very long ago at all that riding in an airplane was a relatively risky proposition, and today, thousands of people do it every day without giving it a second thought.
5.08 years ago, that statement was much more true.
I caught the Mountain Wumpus! He gave me his treasure chest ($100) to let him go free again.
The likelihood of a sattelite being hit by a micrometeor decreases with smaller scale sattelites.
The only problem is manned missions. Low mass, unmanned nano sattelites are the future.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
"Will a serious mishap in space be the end of our manned space program?"
We can only hope that something ends it. Just like the war in Iraq, we waste so much money on the manned space program that we could put to better use. Isn't most of the benefit of our space program now in the unmanned parts -- i.e. the launching of satellites and probes?
Since space is so harsh, the manned space program sole purpose should be to travel to bodies that have atmospheres.
How about some sort of shortwave radar system that tracks inbound threats, combined with a fast-firing gatling gun that shoots thousands of projectiles per second at the incoming material in order to deflect or destroy it.
Ok, it might not seem like a good idea at first, but after each mission, it'll become more and more necessary. The perfect money-making idea for that special aerospace contractor in your life.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The hubble gets hit by particles of sand every month. So far none has done anything more than leave blemishes on it yet. But you get something like the space shuttle pushing 18,000 miles per hour in orbit even a pebble that is a centimeter wide could be very damaging.
Like one of the above posters said, it won't be something bit that ends the space program, it will be something that is seemingly innocuous that causes problems.
Lucky the craft was not an inflatable. :)
Whilst I agree with you about the shuttle in some respects, a rocket based ship won't save you from the kind of impact we are discussing.
I personally think the radiator was the best place for an impact to occur.
The multiple honeycomb layers absorb impact better than a solid single plate (this is the same reason they used aerogel to capture space dust).
A single THWACK on a hard shell could send a shockwave through the craft moving the damage zone elsewhere, better to coat the entire surface in shock absorbing material.
liqbase
and re dn't need these new fangled computers niether. Teams of people using sliderules worked before...and they still work now.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Nano-sats are a particularly poor idea. A satellite needs a certain amount of power if it is to communicate. An antenna has to be of a certain minimum size if it is to pick up or transmit a signal. A solar panel has to have a certain undiminishable size to pick up enough energy to run the satellite. These are very basic and mostly unmoveable limits. There's also the problem of space-wind and drag. A satellite's mass goes down as the cube of its linear dimension, but the drag only goes down as the square. Below a certain size a satellite will have very little mass and intertia, while still having significant cross-sectional drag. Below a certain size satellites don't stay in orbit for very long, they get dragged down by atmospheric drag and solar wind.
a rocket based ship won't save you from the kind of impact we are discussing
The space shuttel is rocket-booster based... I meant capsules carried by rockets. No worries about foam at takeoff, nor do you have to babysit a radiator or whatever fancy part some government contractor shoves down our throats.
that's stupid. we need computers... we just don't need a glider riding on the side of an orange fuel tank.
During the last trip, there was a lot of ISS construction work in EVA. There was a lot of commentary about a bunch of bolts and other small items that got "lost" (dropped) during the activity.
Then there was talk about unknown objects which were sharing the orbit with the shuttle before it descended. They delayed for a whole day just to look at the shuttle again, and to keep looking for lots of parts. But none of the news commentary seemed to draw any connection to the lost bolts.
Now we are hearing about damage done to some radiator panels that are stowed inside the payload bay during landing. Maybe another bolt that bounced around inside the bay during descent and landing?
The EVA crew used little baggies to collect the construction garbage. What other information is available on detritus collection planning? Is the bag's interior sticky? Is it magnetic? Can a space suit or the robotic boom have a large chunk of magnet on it to help "gather" loose untethered parts while they're still nearby but not in easy hand-reach?
Even if it wasn't the lost bolts, it sure looks like the crew is going to have to be super-vigilant about that sort of thing during the next umpteen missions between now and the decommissioning. I doubt ANYONE has any illusions that we'll actually finish the ISS according to plan on time, but the ISS will still need to make the most of the shuttle before it's grounded again and forever.
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Or was it the result of a test run of the laser anti-sattelite weapon system being designed by the Chinese?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Agreed, keeping the payload safe inside the tip of a rocket rather than attached to the side is logically sensible.
liqbase
"Sssssssssssssssssssssssss. . ."
What?
In other words,
(1) The shuttle is inspected with magnifiers after every flight for such hits. Most are tiny, but the windows are the most common part in need of replacement from these hits / pits. This is not the first time, it's not the last. Impacts by micrometeorites make up about half the critical things that could end a flight. They always have. They've known the risk for some time now. The astronauts all understand it. The shuttle flies tail-first in order to minimize the risk to reentry-critical parts. It's mostly news now because of the hype and drama about the return to flight.
And (b) the other previous US and Russian major mishaps didn't end the manned program, the next one won't either.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Hubble circles the earth every 96 minutes which is a distance of close to 25,000 miles so calculate the speed...hint it ain't exactly sitting still...
So what is the correlation between the speed and damage chances between the shuttle and hubble?
Got Code?
It seems that this is a rather larger problem than they consider.
Is there a better way to protect the shuttle in orbit? Will a serious mishap in space be the end of our manned space program?
If whoever going into space doesn't have a plan for coping with the amount of litter in the immediate neighborhood of the earth, then they are stupid and probably WILL suffer catastrophe.
-Styopa
As you said, space is dangerous, it is inherently dangerous, there's no way to really end the danger. The astronauts know this, I respect them completely. Like you, I'd go up in an instant if ever given the opportunity. With that, I don't think any disaster caused by such space debris would end the manned space program. Rather, like what happened with Apollo 1, Challenger, & Columbia, NASA would probably do a thorough review and try to find a solution to further protect the spacecraft and/or backup plans should something go wrong. NASA and any other space program can only plan for so much. Think about Apollo 13 and everything they had to do to get Lovell and his crew home. It all comes back to the danger. Unlike say the military, no astronaut is forced to go up so by entering whatever space vehicle they go up on, they accept that risk.
What's the matter, James? No glib remark? No pithy comeback?
To the point where it would threaten the space program?!? The outside of our comfortable, warm, fluffy atmosphere is a very harsh environment. But if humanity is to have *any* room to grow, we eventually have to go there, though I'd propose we expand underwater first. Sometimes, I wonder about people's sense of exploration.
For those interested in space, I highly recommend the anime Planetes. At the beginning, it specifically deals with artificial space junk floating around threatening space travel in a very plausible view of humanity in 70 years. Overall, the series deals with the dangers of space exploration and the sacrifices humanity will have to endure to explore it (as humans are preparing for a voyage to Jupiter in the series, after already set foot on Mars and setup a small city on the Moon). It's one of the most inspiring TV programs I have ever seen, so much so I actually recommend it for hard-science fiction fans to watch (even if they generally don't watch anime).
"If you can't take a little bloody nose -- maybe you had better go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous -- with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross -- but it is not for the timid."
-Next Generation 2x16 - "Q who"
First off, one inch is 2.54 centimeters. Haven't we learned that precision (as well as decimal places) are important when it comes to dealing with space stuff?! Seriously, I doubt that this will cause the cessation of the space program. More likely, safeguards will be put into place at an enormous cost to the taxpayers that protect against 0.001% chance of something catastrophic happening. On second thought, maybe the ballooning cost *will* cause the cessation of the space program, or, in the very least, it will be relocated to another place where liability is not so high
Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine -- Robert C. Gallagher
Well, if Geordi LaForge would stop diverting power from the deflector shields for his crazy experiments, this wouldn't be such a problem, would it?
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
God, this news is sooo last month.
LegendMUD
Seriously... somebody needs to come up with a shield generator. X-prize anyone?
HTML is obsolete. It's time for a new, simpler and richer markup language.
According to the CIA Factbook there are 298,444,215 people in the US.
Doing the math says you pay US$6.07 a year for the space program.
If you can get yourself into space for that amount, let me know how it turns out.
Skeptical Limericks
Orange-ist! This is just propaganda spread by the vast blue-fuel-tank conspiracy and accepted uncritically by the blue-biased media.
qv: Whipple Shields
The idea behind whipple shields is that you put several thin barriers in front of a hypervelocity threat, and the shock waves induced inside the moving body (from rapidly loading and unloading it with compressive forces) tears it apart. What emerges from the other side of the whipple shield is a cloud of dust rather than a rock (or steel bolt, or whatever), and this cloud of dust is incapable of penetrating the side of your spacecraft.
The document linked above describes research which demonstrates that the strength and thickness of the individual barriers is much less important than the number of barriers, and the ratio of barrier thickness vs space between the barriers. Thus whipple shields can have extremely high mass efficiency against hypervelocity threats, equivalent to 0.6 of the same thickness of hardened steel. A foamed polystyrene solution (where the cell foam wall thicknesses are tuned to the correct ratio of foam cells' widths) could therefore provide the same level of protection as ~135 times its weight in hardened steel plate.
This technology is being actively developed for protecting battletanks from shaped charges (which generate explosively-formed penetrators moving at high hypervelocity speeds of 8,000m/s and more), but its relatively low thickness efficiency (0.6x, as opposed to ~3x-4x for some modern composite armor systems) limits its usefulness in this role, as battletanks have limited space to play with. Spacecraft are much less limited in this respect.
Other so-called "Active Defenses" developed for battletanks might also be applicable.
-- TTK
See, now if only they had a Commander Riker on board - you wouldn't be having these problems. ;-)
Sigh, yes, I'm pathetic. Now where's my blood wine, dammit?
1. Space debris
2. Gatling guns
3. ???
4. Profit!
There isn't any one way to protect the shuttle or astronauts. As time goes one, there will be an increasing amount of space junk. To the extent it has a high velocity relative to something we care about, the junk will punch holes through that thing.
At best, we have a whole list of things we can do to minimize impacts:
1. minimize the junk new satelites spew out. This has been in work for quite a while now.
2. track the paths of known junk, or old junk producers. Again, being done.
3. toughen critical structures on spacecraft, especially pressurized habitats. Also, provide retreat areas that are secure.
4. plan flights around the worst of the known debris clouds. Again, they already do this, but it is increasingly impossible.
5. provide advanced warning of impending collisions. This could come from ground based and vehicle based radars. But frankly, at best you are only going to get a few seconds warning for the smaller stuff. Maybe enough time to say "Duck and cover!"
6. rest assured in the knowledge that, if it isn't big enough to kill you, chances are you can ignore it. And if it does kill you, your problems are all solved.
By the way, the note about the shuttle radiators being pulled in before the shuttle returned to Earth? They HAVE to be pulled in. The Radiators are inside the cargo bay doors. The only way to not pull them in and get the doors closed would be to jettison them, which I doubt the crew could do on orbit, even if they wanted to.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
At the speeds that are involved with the space shuttle, absorbing impact isn't an option. A crush zone might work great for a sedan hitting another car at 60 MPH, but at 17000 mph, there are far more important factors for survivability- namely, luck.
Anything of substantial size that hits the shuttle (or ISS) is going to go right through. No honeycomb structure is going to change that- you just have to hope is stays clear of pressurized areas and such.
groupthink: It's good for self-esteem.
Look, when our ancestors were exploring the seas and new continents, they found a whole new assortment of ways to die. They lost quite a few ships (and the crew). Space exploration is very much the same. If we want to go back to the moon, to Mars and beyond, we have to face the facts that people WILL die in the attempt. Spacecraft will leak atmosphere, power will go out, airlocks will fail, space debris will hit and kill someone or total a CEV. Exploration of the depths of the ocean and the vacuum of space will be for the people who are willing to risk their lives in the attempt.
:-)
To quote Highlander, "It's better to burn out than fade away!"
I, for one, will be working on our return to the moon
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Why doesn't NASA equip its satellites and shuttles with some of the advanced technology available to fighter jets today, tuned to meet cosmo-specs? If you can dodge the bigger chunks then all you need to stay in business is good armoring against the pea-sized debris. Right?
Forbes??? Here's a much better article.
Do you link New Scientist when you have a story about finance?
The story I linked has two big photos of the hole, as well as a much better writup, more details, and far fewer ads.
Sheesh.... Hope your day gets better, Zonk.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
That's their design for the shuttles successor.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Yeah, I know you're joking, but they DID use computers.
I wonder, if I still had a slide rule if I'd remember how to use it? I used one to cheat in math class in high school. Dumb teachers.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Well, the giving it a second thought part, yeah. But not the safer part; flying is as safe now as it was in 2000.
The GP says "relatively short time", I'm scratching my head. I'm 54 and it's been safer than driving my whole life. My grandma who was born six months before the Wright brothers flew their motorized kite knew (from a distance) risky flight (Lindberg et al) but she's been dead since 2003.
"Relatively" is relative, I guess?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Why is NASA/the Government/the Public so quick to shut down the space program every time something bad/fatal happens?
I respect the hell out of anyone who has a job that takes them into harm's way. I also think it's amazing that the US has yet to lose one astronaut IN SPACE. However, how many test pilots have been killed jockeying experimental aircraft for NASA and private companies? Should we not build new aircraft because someone might get killed flying it?
We do need to take a serious look at shuttle safety (or the safety of any system used by someone on a dangerous job), but we also need to understand that shit happens, and sometimes people die when it does. That's not a very consoling thing to tell the family, but it's a necessary evil of the business.
Not only would it be a terrible thing to science to lose the manned space program, but it would also mean that all the people related to space exploration who HAVE been killed in accidents related to space exploration died in vain.
Think about where civilization would be today had not men put out to sea without knowledge of whay lie beyond the horizon.
Space tourists aside, most of the astronauts were/are military personnel. They're not unaccustomed to the fact that their jobs might kill them.
There be monsters beyond the edge of the map, and I'm pretty sure the astronauts know it, accept it and would give their lives for it, so that others could return safely.
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How about ceramics and/or ballistic plates? I know they're heavy, so it's probably not viable - and I really don't know what's currently being used. But unless the object had a velocity over, say, 3000fps and wasn't heavy metal, it'd probably be stopped by such materials. They work well enough for body armor.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
In high school I remember watching a documentary about NORAD and how they track space debris. They showed an animation that illustrated how a serious high-impact collision (think 20,000MPH) that resulted in the total distruction of a vehicle could, in the right orbit, cause a chain-reaction type effect destroying dozens and dozens of other craft. This essentially could make that orbit level non-usable. I'm no astrophysicist, so perhaps an expert can comment. The documentary mentioned this possible scenario is why they track very small objects in space, and apparently "they" will frequently adjust the shuttle orbit to avoid these dangers. Can anyone confirm if this is correct thinking?
Hyper-over-reaction in the original article, and the summary.
This sort of thing is not particularly unusual. The shuttle gets hit with perceptible impact dozens to hundreds of times per mission. They have polish out a few to dozens of divots from the windows alone after each flight. The rocks/paint chip/aluminum particles that make up most of the impactors don't have window-seeking guidance systems, so there are proportionally more hits on the rest of the vehicle too. It's just a matter of statistics to determine that it will hit something relatively interesting/important every once in a while. The odds have been known since the mid-60s. And while the odds are increasing due to man-made debris, it's nothing that exceeds the overall reliability from other reasons. This sort of thing is just a cost of doing business, and it's not going to put an end to anything in the space program.
And no, in this case the hole in the radiator certainly wasn't caused by dropped bolts, or co-orbital debris. By defintion, these have relatively low velocities relative to the shuttle. After the shuttle separated from the ISS and for the few days afterwards, it was, as most, a few hundred feet per second. The impact was clearly a hyper-velocity impact on the order of miles/second.
Brett
Lamest...railgun....EVER!
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
-Tom
Wouldn't coating the skin result in greater insulation, necessitating the need for more radiators? NASA got lucky that the object didn't pierce a liquid line (though, hopefully they're smert enough to have blowout valves on every line in the radiator).
Um, the object went through the panel (albeit only 1/2" thick) - your "multiple honeycomb layers" would be good at crushing under the load of a larger, slower object; but they're pretty useless for an object traveling a bit faster than pffft! that created a point load.
"It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
You have to love this. A completely and utterly random event occurs, the shuttle *takes* the random event and keeps on ticking, and naturally, Slashdot posters immediately use this as an opportunity to harp on the shuttle.
I can just imagine this logic applied to other aspects of daily life:
News report: "Lightning strikes Windows computer; keeps operating."
Slashdot poster: "How about lowering the risk by ditching this fragile and overpriced operating system they call Windows..."
Pinkypants -- my favorite!
they'd be far more self-sufficent.
It's so sad to see how short sighted we be.
The Obvious Solution to this is to make the shuttle a giant solid cube with an eerie soundtrack.
Good thing they fixed it with an inanimate carbon rod! :-)
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
Not sure about the shuttle but Congreess & NASA just tossed away a good idea for a better material for constructing the space station out of years. It was called Transhab. I saw the prototype at NASA in '99 before Congress pulled funding on it 2000. It's much better than what they are using now to build the crew modules. Bigelow Aerospace bought the rights to it from NASA for their space station.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
Maybe some slob of a European/Chinese/Russian spacecraft came alongside and swung its solar panels really wide and did this. We tried to return the Shuttle without mentioning this incident, but we got a letter in the mail saying we had the cost of the hole repair charged to our credit card.
How about ditching the bandwagon and learning to think for yourself?
"I hear hissing in my suit! I hope it's a snake!"
"What? You hate snakes!"
"When you're in a spacesuit and you hear hissing, you damn well hope it's a snake!"
(with apologies to the online comic Freefall)
"To pass through the jungle; silence, courtesy, ferocity, as the occasion demands." -- Kamau, "Proper Passage"