Slashdot Mirror
20-Year-Old Military Weather Satellite Explodes In Orbit
schwit1 writes A 20-year-old U.S. military weather satellite apparently exploded for no obvious reason. The incident has put several dozen pieces of space junk into orbit. From the article: "A 20-year-old military weather satellite apparently exploded in orbit Feb. 3 following what the U.S. Air Force described as a sudden temperature spike. The “catastrophic event” produced 43 pieces of space debris, according to Air Force Space Command, which disclosed the loss of the satellite Feb. 27 in response to questions from SpaceNews. The satellite, Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Flight 13, was the oldest continuously operational satellite in the DMSP weather constellation."
Well, I guess now we know that this was no weather satellite...
It was bound to happen eventually.
Could be the latest test of the Chinese anti-satellite system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASAT_program_of_China
The Chinese aimed a high power laser at a U.S. satellite in 2006 (without damaging it), and blew up one of their own weather satellites in 2007. They have tested a number of anti-satellite systems since then.
This was a test of laser weapons. Either the USA destroyed it or someone else did.
Many satellites are hybrid solar+batteries. They have sun enough to run and charge, so in the shade, they run off batteries. Batteries fail, sometimes spectacularly. It's possible that there was a chemical reaction in the batteries that *caused*, not was the result of, the temperature spike. Then the battery failed, exploding.
Learn to love Alaska
This satellite blew up at 1715 UTC, and since it was in a sun-synchronous polar orbit, local noon would have put that over the Americas (North, Central, or South). This satellite was sitting under the direct sun for 20 years. If the radiator cooling system failed, things could heat up and fail very quickly (there is no wind up there, remember).
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
I doubt that, there are no sharks in space.
Oh, you are serious. Well, that was my first thought too. Either a laser weapon or a small particle of something (meteorite) smashed through it causing a catastrophic failure..
That Russian politician was generally obscure. Maybe not in the western world, but his entire support base registered something like 0.014% of the Russian voting population.
As such, Putin had no threat from the guy, and having him killed like that in broad daylight is pointlessly stupid. Putin is ex-KGB, if he wanted the guy dead, the guy would have "committed suicide", or had an unfortunate car accident (you know, how these things are usually done, everywhere, including the USA).
Governments don't just off their rivals in a big noisy show, that just draws attention and scrutiny from the media and world, and quite frankly offing the guy now does no favours to Putin what so ever. There is nothing for Putin to gain from killing the guy, and lots to lose. As such it is highly unlikely that he was killed on the ruling parties orders.
Then again, you state that Putin is trying to bring back the cold war, when the reality is the other way round. As such I can only assume you are widely misinformed about the nature of the situation. May I recommend staying away from western media and broadening your knowledge of the subject matter if you plan on engaging this topic in future.
Perhaps you could be more informative as to the problem? Why wouldn't a coherent microwave beam be every bit as effective as a laser? Or perhaps you simply didn't realize that masers are a real thing, and even predate lasers sufficiently that lasers were originally called "optical masers".
The only potential issue that I can think of is that, due to the longer wavelength, it would be difficult to focus a maser beam as tightly. Of course if you're happy to cook the whole satellite instead of burn a hole in it, then that's less of an issue.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Micro meteor is an option. So is a laser - the chinese have already been testing them. Where was the satellite over geographically when it exploded?
These ran NiCd cells. Here's some TL;DR from NASA about a variant of NiCd they use(d), not sure if it applies here.
http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oc...
Short notes:
Fancy NiCd, Higher density and sealed. They rely on precise chemistry to be hermetically sealed units (lean on one element, for limiting and only O2 production).
High pressure at full charge (~60PSI at room temp), higher if things go south, Pressure drops with charge state.
Excess discharge causes hydrogen production.
So, tin can, pressure changing with charge cycles (metal fatigue over many cycles?), H2 production, O2 production... maybe there is some chance for catastrophic failure there.
Sent from my PDP-11