Slashdot Mirror
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?
Clearly we need astronauts who are better at playing Asteroids.
An analysis was now underway to try to understand its origin.
A small planet called Krypton.
Even Low-Earth orbit that the ISS flies in isn't safe without it.
Actually, I would guess that LEO is the most dangerous places to be, debris-wise. All debris has to pass through LEO eventually as it enters the atmosphere, and it has the smallest volume of space, so statistically speaking, I'd think the chances of getting hit are by far the highest in LEO.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
NORAD tracks as much space objects and debris as it can. There's a lot of stuff up there and it's constantly changing orbits in a slightly unpredictable way due to variable drag from the atmosphere. This object (NORAD designator 82618) has a drag coefficient 175 times greater than that of the ISS so it was hard to predict in advance that it would be that close. The ISS crew got notice a little over two hours before the encounter at about 2200 GMT (UTC) last night and it cleared the ISS at 0008GMT this morning.
It's by far more likely that the debris is from something the human race has launched into space. It's in low Earth orbit. Pretty much everything that comes from outer space either flies past the earth (see yesterday's encounter with 2011 MD) or slams into it as a shooting star (meteor/meteorite). Something from outer space has to lose an awful lot of speed just as it passes the Earth to end up in Low Earth orbit, which just doesn't happen.
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.
You mean, "maybe now the Chinese will stop blowing up their own satellites as a show of strength"?
the debris cloud of Fengyun 1-C was only 17% of the trackable debris in Aug 2007 :)
Yeah, fat chance - it's not like China has any space station that might be at risk.
You are aware that China is building it's own station? And that in 2007 the country tried to become a partner of the ISS (with positive reactions from Russia and the ESA) but was not invited?
Maybe it was an excess apostrophe.
This is not the sig you're looking for.
Yes, a giant magnet that can also attract aluminium, titanium, gold, austenitic stainless steel and all that other stuff normal magnets can't catch. Why not make it a monopole while we are at it :)
Wouldn't LEO be safer because the drag there is much higher, so debris will quickly pass through and fall down to Earth? Unlike GEOish-orbits where I got the impression it'd be circling for a very long time.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Problem is the HOW. E.g. a plasma cloud wouldn't really help much against high speed debris as they'd just punch through it with their sheer force, even if they do get vaporized they'd likely still hit the hull in that extremely hot state and cause a lot of damage (there's a concept for combining electric reactive armor with a strong magnetic field for tanks so projectiles are turned into plasma and the magnets assist with the deflection but I'm not sure that would stop a modern AP shell and I'm not sure how those even compare to space debris). I don't think there's a real concept for how energy bubbles could even work.
If we could deliver payload to space more easily we could possibly build heavy armor on our spacecrafts that may be able to take some bigger hits than the current stuff (spacecrafts and suits are already armored with a thick foam layer but that won't stop more than tiny, low energy debris).
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
You mean, "maybe now the Chinese will stop blowing up their own satellites as a show of strength"?
the debris cloud of Fengyun 1-C was only 17% of the trackable debris in Aug 2007 :)
Only? Humans have been putting junk into earth orbit for half a century. That a one-time event now accounts for 17% of all trackable debris is actually kind of shocking.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Are you serious? We've been getting stuff to space for 67 years (Germany's V-2 launch in 1944) and one even accounts for almost 1/5 of all trackabe debris?
And you call that *only*.
I would have a pretty doppler signature.
Nothing personal, but I really doubt that.
"There's someone in my head but it's not me." - Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
Orbital speeds (as opposed to velocities) are the same for the same shaped-orbits (which LEO ones pretty much are) so the only variable is direction of motion. Relative velocities can be anywhere from a few feet per second (if the orbits are almost exactly aligned) to a theoretical maximum of about 15,000m/s if the were in a head-on collision (unlikely). I'd guess that it was somewhere in the region of 3-10km/s relative velocity.
For reference, the collision of Iridium 33 and Kosmos-2251 in 2009 was at a relative velocity of 11.7km/s (42,120 kmph or 26,170 mph). Plenty enough to destroy that section of the ISS if it hit.
A South monopole or a North monopole would get pulled towards the earth's North or South pole. If we want it to keep going around in orbit we better make it an East or West monopole :)
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.