On-orbit Satellite Collision |
On-orbit Satellite Collision |
Feb 11 2009, 09:35 PM
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Senior Member Group: Admin Posts: 4763 Joined: 15-March 05 From: Glendale, AZ Member No.: 197 |
Two satellites collide in orbit
BY WILLIAM HARWOOD Posted: February 11, 2009 In an unprecedented space collision, a commercial Iridium communications satellite and a presumably defunct Russian Cosmos satellite ran into each other Tuesday above northern Siberia, creating a cloud of wreckage, officials said today. Iridium satellite An artist's concept of an Iridium satellite orbiting the Earth. Photo: Iridium The international space station does not appear to be threatened by the debris, they said, but it's not yet clear whether it poses a risk to any other military or civilian satellites. "They collided at an altitude of 790 kilometers (491 miles) over northern Siberia Tuesday about noon Washington time," said Nicholas Johnson, NASA's chief scientist for orbital debris at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "The U.S. space surveillance network detected a large number of debris from both objects." MORE..... http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0902/11iridium/ -------------------- If Occam had heard my theory, things would be very different now.
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Feb 13 2009, 05:38 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3419 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Member No.: 15 |
The dynamics of the impact also affect the kinetic energy transfer. Remember, you don't just "lose" energy, it's translated into other forms of energy, other vectors, etc.
If the two bodies hit pretty much directly, then much of the "lost" orbital energy would be used up in melting, shattering and vaporizing the structures of the bodies. If the collision path would have only a half or a quarter of one of the bodies intersecting the other, less kinetic energy is used up in vaporization and the resulting debris' orbits are altered less than in a direct impact. If only a very small physical interaction occurs (i.e., if an antenna on one vehicle snags an antenna on the other vehicle), the two bodies will still break up (especially if the "just barely" contact comes at 11 km/sec!), but they'll break up due to the extreme rotational rates imparted by the "brush-by". This last scenario changes the orbits of the resulting debris the least. I don't know if our "security assets" are able to image satellites at 800km range well enough to characterize the resulting debris from the Cosmos-Iridium collision, but the extent of debris and its orbital characteristics (as tracked by radar) ought to give us some idea as to how direct a hit they endured. -the other Doug -------------------- “The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.” -Mark Twain
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