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Satellites Collide In Orbit
DrEnter writes "According to this story on Yahoo, two communications satellites collided in orbit, resulting in two large clouds of debris. The new threat from these debris clouds hasn't been fully determined yet. From the article, 'The collision involved an Iridium commercial satellite, which was launched in 1997, and a Russian satellite launched in 1993 and believed to be nonfunctioning. Each satellite weighed well over 1,000 pounds.' This is the fifth spacecraft/satellite collision to occur in space, but the other four were all fairly minor by comparison."
I'm just waiting for one of those things to crash through some suburban American family's house.
These satellites were Iridium33 (24946) and K-2251 (22675). Now they are pieces of debris from bowling ball sized pieces to vapor.
A nice little animation of the collision is placed here:
http://i39.tinypic.com/2vbk75z.gif
This was bound to happen and will happen again. The interesting question is how come they didn't maneuver one of them out of the way. I don't know if 22675 is an active payload that still has power but Iridium33 certainly has the capability of moving. This one was avoidable. Even my non rocket science brain can take the TLEs and figure out that they were passing way too close to each other (I put it at about 500 meters with the latest elements).
Unfortunately, this didn't create 2 'clouds' of debris. This created one huge field of debris that will continue to expand over time. Many of the pieces will be tracked but the very small pieces cannot be.
It would have been way cool to observe the collision!
Satellite smoke. Don't breathe this.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
Too bad orbital tracking didn't give enough warning for Iridium to get their bird out of the way. I guess no one is cross checking the orbits of all satellites? I know it is done for the shuttle and space station. (The space station *has* maneuvered to keep away from space junk.)
Computers obey me.
Hopefully the wreckage from this one doesn't end up causing any unpleasant chain reactions. Not only are satellites really expensive, we currently have no especially good way of ridding ourselves of orbital debris. It would suck to fill our good bits of orbit with trash.
I don't have the probabilities off hand but it is more likely than one might think at first glance. The set altitudes that are useful is not that large, especially for satellites that have the same job (in this case, communication). Furthermore, satellites are circling repeatedly so there are many opportunities where orbits will cross paths. That said, if I were the owners of the Iridium satellite I'd be pissed off right now. They've just lost a very expensive piece of equipment in what should be a preventable mishap. Somebody is going to get fired.
Does anyone know what these particular satellites were each being tasked to do? (prior to one of them becoming a single-use kinetic energy space-based weapon system projectile)
Now, I do wear my tin-foil hat a lot, so I'll try to answer your question.
What are the chances that a satellite was launched in 1993 so that it would collide with a satellite launched in 1997, in 2009? As an attempt by Putin to test Obama?
I don't know the exact numbers, but I'd suggest that it might be more profitable to put your entire savings into Powerball tickets.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
from the article: "Iridium Holdings LLC has a system of 65 active satellites which relay calls from portable phones that are about twice the size of a regular mobile phone. It has more than 300,000 subscribers. The U.S. Department of Defense is one of its largest customers." The collision occurred over Siberia.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
The question is, did anyone have any specific knowledge of the likelihood of this specific collision prior to the event?
Maybe they're like slashdot dupes. Everyone knows they're coming, they just can't be certain when.
I know of 3 previous collisions.
1991-12-23 COSMOS vs. COSMOS DEB (discovered in 2005)
1996-07-24 CERISE vs. Ariane R/B
2005-01-17 Thor Burner vs. CZ-4 DEB
What's the 4th previous??
When a satellite fails, often it cannot be de-orbited. Several failure modes will cause this - the most common is the malfunction of the controller, communications unit, or onboard power system. When any of these fail, there's no way to command the retro-rocket to fire.
Then, too, you need the satellite to be pointed in the correct direction (meaning that its stationkeeping rockets are working), and for it to have enough hydrazine (or whatever) to be deorbited. Near the end of a spacecraft's life, consumables are limited.
And, of course, it takes a lot of energy to de-orbit many satellites. A geostationary comsat needs one heck of a kick motor to get it down. Usually they are not brought down to burnup in the atmosphere. Instead, they are moved a few dozen (hundred?) kilometers inwards from their geostationary slot. This puts 'em well away from the main circle of geostationary satellites.
It's like consumer goods ... manufacturers work to make them last long enough to complete their mission; few think about how to get rid of 'em once their purpose has expired.
Planetes is a japenese cartoon about this very subject, and other unpleasant realities of space travel including space-radiation induced cancer, the birth problems of people living on the moon, and the long delay involved in inter-planetary travel.
The main character, 'Hachimaki', is basically a space garbage collector.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
These guys sell micrometers that can measure things as large as five feet across and ones that can only measure up to an inch across. It seems to me that something is the size of a micrometer is somewhat vague.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Typically, when it comes to right of way, the less maneuverable vehicle has the right of way (for example, a balloon has the right of way over a glider, which has the right of way over an airship, which has the right of way over an airplane. Similar rules apply to seaborne vessels.) Taking at face value the summary's statement that the Russian satellite was non-functional, it was clearly the duty of the operators of the Iridium satellite to take action. If you want to talk claims/liability, I'd say that the Iridium folks are on the hook for huge damages--through negligence they've created a massive hazard to navigation that will be a problem for... what, centuries?
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Yes, of course, they certainly ARE watching all satellites! You see, these birds cost something in the order of $100 million each, don't you think someone is being paid to take care of them?
Well, of course, if it's something between a broken satellite that never reached its intended orbit, and a satellite from a bankrupt company that never had any profit, that's different. It's not as if they were true operating satellites, is it?
It's time for MegaMaid. Get NASA started on that Spaceball-1 project STAT.
Be Safe! Sleep with a Marine. Semper Fi!
if it collided with a $100,000 toolbag....
Informative post but just one correction, at end of life the birds in geo RAISE their orbit. Decay takes so long that the graveyard orbits are stable over pretty much everyone's planning horizon (centuries+). If collisions occur up there then relative velocities are hopefully small enough to limit the debris field.
Not to troll or to dwell into politics here, But does anyone here know any numbers for the *actual* chances/probabilities that satellite A will collide with satellite B in orbit around the Earth?
Yes. The actual probability is 1.
The Russian satellite was launched in 1993. At that point it was no longer "Soviet", you insensitive clod!
Once upon a time in a mythical land called Soviet Russia, a hot bowl of grits had Natalie Portman.
This is one way the theoretical Ablation Cascade could start. At least then we wouldn't have to worry about getting to the Moon. We couldn't.
Bummer if it happens before the Webb Space Telescope launches...
Actually, any piece large enough to pose a threat to anything we care about can be tracked, and by what counts as ancient technology: the AN/FPS-85 phased array spacetrack radar, for example.
Warning: This signature may offend some viewers.
So a fair comparison has to compare the economies of a HASTOL rotovator, adjusted for the technological risk, to the difference between current high perigee LEO applications and modification of those applications to have perigees low enough to naturally reenter at about the same time the satellite is at the end of its projected useful life.
The trade-off is not nearly as clear as you make it out to be, and with the value of getting things to and from space being essentially "halfway to anywhere", it is pretty clear that you've got a lot weaker case than you apparently think.
Seastead this.
Only on Slashdot could something so paranoid, full of speculation and even illogical when you take the facts into account get modded insightful, not once, but twice.
I'm not even sure what's so difficult to believe about two satellites colliding when there's so many up there. Even two relatively highly maneuverable manned planes collided in the UK a day or two ago, so it doesn't seem that difficult to think that two much less maneuverable, one of which no longer even active and working, unmanned objects might be able to collide.
Putin has spent the last few years selling himself in martial arts videos, showing off his ability to shoot tigers, flexing his muscles whilst fishing and many other such show off type things. Don't you think he'd jump at the chance to say "Hey, by the way, Russia just show down a satellite too?". Even if they realised they screwed up by somehow hitting a commercial satellite too don't you think the commercial satellite owners would say something? don't you think the US, China and millions of other people capable of tracking such events would scream at the chance to say "Russia just flung something into space and taken out a civilian satellite"?
I don't even see what's so coincidental about the timing, what's so special that now, over 2 years after China did it would be a good time for Russia to have a pop at it again too? Is there something special about around 2 years and 3 weeks later that allows it to be defined as coincidental?
But there's a bigger problem with your theory, ASAT technology isn't even new, the Russians built ASAT kit back in the 60s, 70s and 80s, the US has had F15 launchable ASAT missiles since at least the 80s, possibly the 70s. In fact, looking at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon#USSR.2FRussia) it states Russia has pulled off 23 test launches and has had an operaitonal ASAT system since 1973.
If anyone's going to show off ASAT capability next it'll be somewhere like Iran or India most likely. I like people who think outside the box and come up with new ideas but come on if we're going to have conspiracy theories and mod them insightful let's at least have them consist of some degree of plausibility and at least make some sense please?