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Japan's $273 Million Satellite Has Broken Up Into 'Multiple Pieces' (techinsider.io)
An anonymous reader writes: The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced that it has lost contact with its "Hitomi" satellite -- a state-of-the-art X-ray observatory, developed in conjunction with NASA, to spy on energetic processes in space including black holes, massive galaxies, and exploding stars. On Sunday, March 27, the Japanese Space Agency announced it had lost contact with the satellite on March 26, just a little more than a month after it was launched on February 17. Now, Members of the U.S. Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC), a military organization that identifies and tracks space debris near Earth, said five objects were drifting near the location of Hitomi at around the same time it lost communication with Earth, Nature reports. It's being reported that Hitomi has separated into "multiple pieces" before March 26. Currently, there are about 40 JAXA technicians scouring the skies, trying to locate the expensive observatory.
We either need to start cleaning up or affixing defensive technology onto satellites.
China does have anti-satellite missiles. If the Japanese telescope got pointed in the wrong direction, they may have mistaken it for a spy satellite and taken it out.
http://thediplomat.com/2014/03/china-secretly-tested-an-anti-satellite-missile/
Here's a tweet that shows a sudden change in orbital period. That could be consistent with an impact pushing it slightly closer to the planet. That's a small change, I think the Y axis on that graph is orbital period in minutes, so it only represents a change of about 2 seconds. Even so, it's obviously noticeable. Although it's a little odd that it didn't keep changing that quickly. If an impact pushed it into a slightly lower orbit it wouldn't just stop there, it would keep falling. Although maybe the impact came from the rear and it just slightly sped up the satellite. If the speed slightly increased then that should result in a 1-time drop in the orbital period.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I think an anti-satellite missile would result in more than 5 pieces.
To say nothing of the fact that any interceptor capable of getting to Hitomi would be detected by the US Joint Space Operations Center and the Russian equivalent.
It takes a big rocket to get up there.
Given the velocities involved, a few flecks of paint that broke off of an earlier mission could do it, especially if they managed to hit something pressurized. (Note: I have no idea if Hitomi had propellant).
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
If an impact pushed it into a slightly lower orbit it wouldn't just stop there, it would keep falling.
That's not how orbits work. A lower orbit is still an orbit, and it's perfectly stable unless the satellite was pushed clear into the atmosphere. Without adding significant kinetic energy or subtracting it from the satellite, any impact that makes it deviate from its normal course would send it on a more elliptical orbit.