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ISS Nearly Clobbered By Space Debris
erice writes "A chuck of space debris came within 335 meters of the space station, forcing the crews to head to their escape capsules and prepare for emergency evacuation to Earth. '[NASA's] Associate Administrator for Space Operations, Bill Gerstenmaier, said it was the closest a debris object had ever come to the station. An analysis was now underway to try to understand its origin, he added.'"
What about a Bob or a John of space debris? Hmmmm?
I'm glad no harm came to the crew, but its good that an occurrence of this sort happened without injuring anyone. Maybe now they will start to develop smarter technology to help prevent disasters such as this in space.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it. -Alan Kay
Clearly we need astronauts who are better at playing Asteroids.
I skimmed the article, but I don't see that they mention how they noticed the debris. How was that done? Because they crew went into the escape capsules, you'd think it was detected i advance. How long in advance? Otherwise, perhaps they just felt that after one piece had already passed them, others were likely to follow, motivating the emergency readyness.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
An analysis was now underway to try to understand its origin.
A small planet called Krypton.
Supposedly, one was due to visit recently...
This is why we need _some_ kind of usable shielding technology (plasma cloud held in place by magnetic fields, energy bubble, whatever, etc. ) else space travel will predicatively unsafe. Even Low-Earth orbit that the ISS flies in isn't safe without it.
I'm going to just go out on a limb here and say I'm pretty sure the debris came from space. It is an object with an infinite amount of possibilities regarding it's place of origin. It is probably too far away from the ISS to get a good look at it, so there won't be any sort of analysis on the physical comp of the rock. I doubt there were little green aliens hanging onto the side of it, so it's probably not from somewhere that we're actually interested.
Debris From Satellites' Collision Said to Pose Small Risk to Space Station
It seems like the risk isn't that small after all.
But how is just over one third of a kilometer considered a near miss?
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
Silly question... Why not send a big magnet into space to catch all the floating debris and bring it back to earth for recycling, or at least burning it up in the atmosphere? At least that won't clobber the multi-billion dollar ISS when its back down here...
Okay, suppose for a moment that a piece of debris hit. It causes a significant leak so the station is evacuated and all the astronauts and cosmonauts go home. But the damage isn't so severe that the station is a total write-off.
Without a space shuttle and thus without the ability to park another vehicle close by (most likely docked but with the hatches closed) from where you can do spacewalks, how are we going to repair the ISS? Or do the Russians have this capability?
Or is the ISS an automatic write-off in case of a loss of air pressure?
...without getting clobbered by space debris, or more accurately, our own space junk.
Statistics I had heard years ago spoke of some 8,000 objects that NORAD tracks in our orbit. I'm certain that number has grown significantly since then, but I wonder how much of that we have been responsible for putting up there? Seems our habits in space tend to mirror our (bad) habits on earth.
Where is the offense and defense?
Am I to believe that "outer space" is not the current front-runner in the list of possibilities?
I hope I'm not the only one that read that and thought "Escape capsules? Oh, that is awesome!" Please tell me there's video. Are they all acting calmly and reasonably as expected, or is one of them going "Game over, man! GAME OVER!"?
Yes, I'm glad they weren't actually hit. But in a world where we have PEOPLE! IN! SPACE! and 99.9999% of the population doesn't know their names (me included), a little drama once in awhile isn't such a bad thing.
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
It's time they add lasers to the ISS, to shoot away that kind of stuff.
That chunk of "debris" is probably a piece of some secret equipment put up there by a government agency with its head so far up its ass that it wouldn't admit to it and would rather let it destroy the ISS than warn or coordinate.
Gee ... like 100 chunks of debris were in the same lane as my car this morning...far closer to smacking into it... sometimes less than a meter
Once Bigelow builds their space station, it will be above most of this. That will help a lot of things, though you still have to travel up there.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
[NASA's] Associate Administrator for Space Operations, Bill Gerstenmaier, said it was the closest a debris object had ever come to the station. An analysis was now underway to try to understand its origin, he added.
My understanding is that the station mostly originated in the US and Russia, with help from about sixteen other countries. NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Operations should really know this, or at least be able to look this up on Wikipedia.
clobbered? Not hardly, it was 4 inches big, probably not much larger than the OP's penis.
It probably would of flew right through the station, not clobbered it. fucking sensationalists
Adding lasers to the ISS will make certain ~Emporers extremely anxious.. No?
I thought this wasn't supposed to happen till 2075?? INTO was lying..! err hold on...
I find it very hard to believe that the ISS has not been hit by micro-sized debris considering one of the shuttles has and various low-earth satellites have also. I suspect that it has plenty of small craters...
Couldn't the Daedalus have just moved in-between and caught the projectile in their shields? What do we fund SG1 for if not to protect space?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
As a point of comparison, the Empire State Building is 381 meters talls.
So how long will it be before some pariah-state with primitive space capability, in yet another fit of childish Beloved Leader temper-tantrum-class behavior, launches a canister of one-inch aluminum bearings into crowded orbits to create orbital minefields to destroy satellites and otherwise be a pain in the ass?
Yes, that would be without question an act of war, just like mining sea lanes in international waters would be. Does anyone think that would stop a Beloved Leader from doing it if he could use the war-drums to cling to power?
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.