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Tiny Particle Blows Hole In European Satellite's Solar Panel (go.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ABC News: A tiny piece of debris has punched a gaping hole in the solar panel of one of Europe's Earth observation satellites, causing visible damage but not enough to affect its routine operations, the European Space Agency said Wednesday. The unknown particle just a few millimeters big slammed into the back of a solar panel on Copernicus Sentinel-1A on Aug. 23. Using on-board cameras, engineers have determined that the hole is about 40 centimeters (16 inches) in diameter. The European Space Agency said the loss of power caused by the strike is "relatively small" -- less than 5 percent of the wing's usual output. The likelihood of such a strike is calculated at between 1:35 and 1:130 during the satellite's five-year lifetime, said Holger Krag, who heads the agency's space debris office. While the particle probably had a mass of less than 1 gram (0.04 ounces), scientists calculated that it was traveling at up to 40,000 kilometers an hour (24,856 mph) when it hit Sentinel-1A. Space.com has posted a video about the incident, showing images taken before and after the impact.
that space debris has created more space debris that will create more space debris that ...
Even then, I doubt that there are many people who do not have a feeling for how big 40 cm is, even in countries where inches and feet are still in use.
Everyone knows that the projectile has a large amount of energy. The question is how much of the energy was transferred to the solar panels. When a projectile blows through a thin object, most of the energy remains with the projectile.
does it need a flash video (of all things) to show a before and after image of the panel?
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
If you are going to do a unit conversion then learn about significant digits. So 0.0020 furlongs is the actual conversion for people that actually know about units and measurement.
While most are probably fine as you say. Nothing was lost by including the information and if it helped a few it was helpful.
Yes, something was lost by the conversion - the uncertainty factor changed.
40 cm in this context where the hole hasn't been accurately measured is an estimate, not a fixed value. If translating to inches, 16 inches implies a much higher precision than what's implied by 40 cm.
"14-18 inches" would be a much better conversion.