First Time: Sats Collide

[rattler]

Wall Street Journal, FEB 12, 2009

A commercial satellite owned by a U.S. company was destroyed in a collision with a defunct Russian military satellite in what NASA said was the first such accident in orbit, raising new concerns about the dangers of space debris.
The crash, which happened Tuesday in low-earth orbit, involved one of the satellites owned by closely held Iridium Satellite LLC and a crippled Russian military satellite that apparently stopped functioning years ago, according to U.S. government and satellite-industry officials.
The collision created two large clouds of debris floating roughly 480 miles above Siberia, and prompted space scientists and engineers to assess the likelihood of further collisions.

What impact will this have on the general sat launching idea/business?

I think we will have to face such collisions more frequently in the future, making it necessary to recalculate budgets, production plans, etc. not even taking into condieration possible collisions in near earth orbtit with a shuttle or ISS

Rattler

[ZilogMan]

Nobody stated if the collision was expected - or - a big surprise.
I thought that all the stuff upthere, good or junk, was tracked very closely...

[Dmmoore]

The objects were in low earth orbit which means the majority of the debris cloud will pass over most of the surface of the earth as it orbits.
Objects in synchronous orbit are only located above the equator and have very low speed difference.
Object that may affect the ISS are watched very carefully. Objects in the same orbital plane should not be too much of a concern because the orbital velocities are similar or they would not be in the same orbit.
It appears the satilites involved were orbiting in very different directions. North South vs East West.

[David Hilditch]

What impact will this have on the general sat launching idea/business?

Well, we can't stop satellite launchings given our dependence on the things, so not much will happen, other than a redoubled effort to track debris. The real issue is that this collision happened at an orbit where huge numbers of satellites are in orbit, ie. 450-500 miles. Space is a big place, so the risks still remain low, but exponential increases in debris mean a bigger disaster will happen one day.

[ZeroAltitude]

It's a pity there's no air up there.
Otherwise they could just launch some oversized vacuum cleaner and that was that.
Coming to think of it - a large magneto could do the trick.
Apart from the debris made up of aluminum or cheap composites of course.

[David Hilditch]

I hear that the Iridium was operational and could have been moved if they had wanted to or had had sufficient early warning. It may be that the encounter was not expected, or was expected but that a close miss was predicted. If a collision was expected/predicted, it's poor form that nothing was done to move the Iridium.

[Lancer]

I would assume that there is probably some "larger" pieces that have changed orbit and will re-enter the atmosphere.
Wonder if the track has been projected.

[Dmmoore]

I hear that the Iridium was operational and could have been moved if they had wanted to or had had sufficient early warning. It may be that the encounter was not expected, or was expected but that a close miss was predicted. If a collision was expected/predicted, it's poor form that nothing was done to move the Iridium.

It's my understanding that the US tracks all active satellites and space junk that poses a threat to the shuttle, ISS, objects in synchronous orbit and Hubble. They do not have the resources to track everything out there.

[rattler]

Here an update on the current stand of discussion regarding the space junk prob.

Rattler

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090219/ap_ ... space_junk