US and Russian satellites collide

[Aontan 0]

US and Russian satellites collide

Thursday, 12 February 2009 10:58

A US and a Russian satellite have collided in the first known major space accident of its kind.

The collision created two clouds of debris that are being tracked by experts.

A communications satellite belong to US company Iridium hit a disused Russian military satellite on Tuesday, officials said.

The collision took place 800km above the Earth.

'A collision occurred between an Iridium 33 satellite and a Russian Kosmos 2251 military satellite,' Major General Alexander Yakushin said.

The Russian satellite was launched in 1993 and ceased to function two years later, he added.

NASA is tracking hundreds of particles of debris from the collision, and says the orbiting International Space Station faces a small risk of being struck.

'While this is an extremely unusual, very low-probability event, the Iridium constellation is uniquely designed to withstand such an event, and the company is taking the necessary steps to replace the lost satellite with one of its in-orbit spare satellites,' the Iridium Satellite company said in a statement.

Iridium Satellite, which says its network comprises 66 communication satellites plus in-orbit spares, has rejected any fault for the accident.

'This satellite loss may result in very limited service disruption in the form of brief, occasional outages,' it said, adding that the company expects to implement a solution by tomorrow, and move a spare satellite already in orbit to replace the destroyed satellite within 30 days.

Cosmic collisions of space junk are not unheard of, but NASA officials say it is the first involving two intact satellites, the Washington Post reported.

NASA spokesman John Yembrick said the collision debris would continue to spread and could end up forcing the space station into evasive manoeuvres.

'The space station does have the capability of doing a debris-avoidance manoeuvre if necessary,' and has done so on eight occasions, he said.

Story from RTÉ News:
http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0212/satellite.html

quote>

*Prepares for barrage of 'In Soviet Russia...' jokes.*

[jon7985 3]

In Soviet Russia....heh, thought I had a good one, not quite. But this is pretty cool

[your_adress_here 11]

Cool. I woulda thought there would have been previous satellite collisions before this, but I guess not.

[Easy Bakes 253]

Originally posted by: your_adress_here Cool. I woulda thought there would have been previous satellite collisions before this, but I guess not.quote>

 

Space is big, satellites small.

 

But with 1000s of them you would have thought there would have been one before now.

Pretty soon there will need to  be an effort to collect or destroy ( force a reentry?)

all the disabled satelites that are up there.Waiting for them to fall into reentry on thier own seems to be a bad way to do it since theres several going up every year.

[fukuda 351]

That's the problem with military satellites, you're not meant to know where their orbit is (especially when you're a private company)

[Duke87 1,070]

Wow, what are the odds?

[Barbarossa 51]

.

  Edited September 7, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[JanYpe 17]

Originally posted by: Duke87 Wow, what are the odds? quote>

You might say the odds were.....astronomical.

:edit: My expert legal team informs me that to say this would be an offence to public taste, decency and humour, and I hereby retract the remark.

[Boggy1 45]

Gah, this really isn't that cool at all. Some of you don't seem to understand just how dangerous space debris is. Being that there is no friction in space, you shoot off a bit of debris, the size of say a screw, at around 7 kilometres per second (which is about the average speed for debris these days), and it will blow a shuttle or a satellite to pieces.

Sure, the chances are quite rare, as space is BIG, but the problem is that once two things collide, bits shoot off in all directions - as has happened here; two vast debris clouds have been created, which luckily will probably fall back to earth - and will collide with other pieces of debris or satellites, causing more debris to shoot off and collide with things, causing more and more debris. It is exponential, and may very well cause something called the Kessler Syndrome.

The Kessler Syndrome is the scenario that so much debris will be accumulated in a very short space of time due to the 'debris creating more debris' in Low Earth Orbit, that it will prove a risk, threat, or danger to Earth launches and orbiting satellites. This may render spaceflight impossible for several generations.

A few years ago, a miniscule speck of paint caused a 2mm hole in the window of a shuttle. You can imagine what a screwdriver, or say, an entire spent rocket stage, would do. Lucky for us, NASA, the ESA, and the USSC, track a lot of the orbiting space debris. But it is still exceedingly surprising to see just how MUCH junk there is orbiting our planet:

(Image: approximately 13,000 large space debri objects -inc. debri clouds - orbiting the Earth. Credit: NASA)

But this is only scratching the tip of the problem. They predict that there could be as much as 600,000 +1cm pieces of space debris in orbit. This doesn't count the millions of -1cm pieces.

Eventually, all this debris will begin orbital decay, and will come down and burn up in the atmosphere. But for a lot of the pieces, this could take as long as 30 plus years.

Right now, a majority of all the defunct non-operational satellites orbiting the Earth are in a special 'Graveyard Orbit', high above the path of most other satellites. But these still pose a great danger, as they will get hit by micrometeorites and break up, or will eventually decay and endanger the satellites at lower orbits. It should be mandatory for all satellites to be able to have enough delta-v required to perform a de-orbit manoeuvre, which would send it burning up in the Earths atmosphere. That would be a pretty much harmless way to destroy satellites without the risk of more debris-creation.

So what to do about all of the junk already up there? Well, the simplest option would be to just wait and let it fall back down to Earth. But this simply is not viable. More and more satellites are going up every year, and it takes a long time for even the smallest of debris to de-orbit. The risk of collisions and debris creation can only go up from here.

It is also not just a case of kicking the biggest pieces back down; you would need to attach a rocket booster to gain enough acceleration to really make sure something entered the atmosphere. And that is exceedingly wasteful.

You also can't just go about collecting all the debris on EVA, and returning them to a spacecraft to be disposed of or recycled. One, the risk of damage to the people/robots performing the EVA would be great (a tiny piece of debris would be moving at huge speeds, and would tear right through a spacesuit or a robot), and the risk is even more so if you were working inside a debris field. Also, the energy waste would be colossal.

There is also the option of lasering the debris, or somehow destroying it. But that again could create more debris in the process, negating the entire operation.

It's an exceedingly difficult situation, and a pretty major problem we could be facing. I think that if we don't start now to seriously address this, we could face the dire consequences soon in the future.

[GMT 389]

too bad this image isn't to scale...

well, of course there's a hell of a lot of stuff flying around up there that we left behind (like humanity can't do anything else but leaving it's garbage behind...) but then again, this picture makes it more dramatic then it actually is because the markings are sooo big comapred to earth.

I mean, we're still talking about god knows how many thousands of objects, but this stuff is about the size of an suv, on average.

so chances are not that high actually that they hit. the related authorities of course plan where to put what, and used to do it so they pretty much tried to avoid such a collision.

what really makes me think about this event is the fact that a us news sattelite was struck down by a decommisioned russian military sattelite.

like... duh!

especially in these times when the relations between soon-to-be-soviet-again-russia and the capitalist enemy of the people kinda are a little ... let's say... tense due to energy politics and a couple of other things.

I guess I'm by far not the only one with a reaction like this. Not that I want to point the finger or anything, it's just that it makes me wrinkle my nose.

[warrior 169]

Satellites should be controlled by a single international body, that can track and control every satellite in orbit.

A few months ago, I only though there were a couple of satellites in orbit (under 50), only quite recently did I release how many there were and that space junk even existed.

Magnets? Surely getting rid of all the metal debris would greatly decrease the amount of debris?

The debris thing, will probably become the environment/global warming argument/situation of the future.

Also the more satellites/rockets fired into space the more chance of creating a disaster, and when one does happen more junk is created, and it goes up more and it keeps getting more and more. But as usual I fully expect someone to actually do something when it becomes an immediate problem, and then it costs 10x as much as it could have a few years earlier, and doing so would have saved spacecraft and lives.

Jonathan

[Dark_Jedi06 13]

We made the planet surface a dirty mess, and now we've done the same to the vacuum surrounding it. It's only a few more steps until the moon and Mars are landfills too.

[Explodingsims 3]

Huh...I'm surprised this never happened before.

[safemining1 0]

When I first heard that these two satellites were American and Russian, my first thought was "Ah! The Space wars have begun!"

I just find it real interesting that we have so many satellites up in orbit today.

And hearing that the ISS can do "evasive maneuvers" made me LOL.

[pagenotfound 53]

Dark Jedi: and a few more steps to dumping it into Proxima Centauri

But satelites should be brought back into earth by a forced re-entry when they die. They did that with MIR which was a lot bigger then a satellite.

Or they could equip satellites with heat shields so they can survive re-entry and get recycled. Just doesnt make sense to not clean up our messes...

However higher orbits take a lot longer to decay. Normally orbits decay in the course of close to 30 years. But higher orbits can take centuries even millennia to decay. But if their up at that altitude that could make future missions to the moon and Mars a little hazardous. It wouldnt be cost effective to load extra fuel on them to ensure they make it back to Earth. Even IF you could force satellites to re-enter there is a chance albeit infinitesimal that they could survive and cause some damage. It wouldn't be a good day if a nuclear powered satellite blew up a few miles above NYC...

[mcarch 15]

Space debris plus no friction and speed... now send a shuttle up full of people...

[adamspalmer 2]

LOL, maybe US and Russia got together on this one to cover up they actually took out the only Iranian Satellite in orbit.  Oddly enough just put in orbit just a few days before, coincidence I think NOT! LOL This was a joke, this was only a joke, had it been an actually emergency...........

[belfastuniguy 18]

Problem with the debris is generally and over time it can be pulled back toward earth and burns up.

However, the high levels of carbon dioxide is cooling the outer atmosphere and reducing its size, so debris is taking a hell of a lot longer to 'fall' back toward Earth. People shouldn't under estimate the dangers, a vast amount of modern life is dependent on a complex network of satellites, from communications to time and positioning devices. I heard today that even a fragment of paint travelling at great speed would destroy a satellite.

[TwelveToneMusic 0]

With so much junk out there, I find it interesting that we are able to travel through orbit so safely the way we do.

[hym 358]

Originally posted by: warrior Satellites should be controlled by a single international body, that can track and control every satellite in orbit. quote>

A lot of the major countries aren't going to want to play ball with that though.  Do you want someone else knowing where you're putting spy satellites?

A few months ago, I only though there were a couple of satellites in orbit (under 50), only quite recently did I release how many there were and that space junk even existed.quote>

If I may ask, how did you think we accomplish all the stuff that we did with less than 50 satellites in orbit?

Magnets? Surely getting rid of all the metal debris would greatly decrease the amount of debris?quote>

Getting rid of it would be good, but there are major logistical problems with getting electromagnets into space and then using them to collect space junk.

[Duke87 1,070]

Originally posted by: hym

Magnets? Surely getting rid of all the metal debris would greatly decrease the amount of debris?quote>

Getting rid of it would be good, but there are major logistical problems with getting electromagnets into space and then using them to collect space junk.quote>

The first one being that not all of the junk is magnetic.

[Deathtoall 28]

Look on the bright side! Now aliens know where to trace those annoying beebing sounds affecting their satellite TV Just look for the calling card, a planet with a landfill for company.

Or it could be used for asteroids deflection

Jokes aside it is still amazing that there is that much space junk up there. I knew 50 was a rather small amount for satellites but that photo boggy posted demonstrate a large poportion of it. Considering the time it took just to knock pluto off as a planet imagine the time for an international body governing space. ( Kicking Pluto was good but i had already past year 5 astronomy)

[SimFox 800]

I don't think creation of one single planetary body that would control all the satellites around Earth is even a remote possibility till we have proper world government. I can't imagine situation when Russia, US, China, Israel would give location of their satellites if not to each other but rather to the world's public. What could be done is a global law that would force any satellite operator to force re-entry it into thick atmosphere after it has served it time.

One thing is that some of the US and Russian satellites are actually nuclear powered... How would such a system react on collision or even re-entry..?

[Duke87 1,070]

Originally posted by: SimFox One thing is that some of the US and Russian satellites are actually nuclear powered... How would such a system react on collision or even re-entry..?quote>

The same way everything else reacts: by burning up.

Obviously, some fallout would be created by it... but it would be so high in the atmosphere and with such a small amount of uranium that it would easily disperse enough so as to not be a problem, I'd think.

Unless the reactor was intentionally designed to be able to survive reentry and those control rods reach the surface intact....

Besides, in all probability, the reentering satellite would be aimed at an ocean or at least a sparsely populated region area. Take the area of all urban areas on Earth and compare it to the total surface area of the whole planet. There's your odds.

[Haljackey 17,241]

Originally posted by: Boggy1

quote>

Man, look at all that junk. 

How'd we get so messy?  Just think in 50 years or so there will be so much crap in orbit that it would be risky for manned space vessels to take off. 

[Boggy1 45]

hal: Read the rest of my post, and you can see that that is exactly the problem we are facing. It's quite serious, certainly nothing to laugh about.

The question, how we got so messy, is pretty simple to answer. The majority of large space debri comes from dead satellites that are in the Graveyard Orbit, or just floating along like this Russian satellite. Another source is spent rocket stages; before the advent of the resuable shuttle, the rockets would eject the lower halves of their engines at various stages in their flight, some of which have settled into a stable orbit.

Most of the small debris comes from flecks of paint, or bits of materal, whatever, which is ejected every time a shuttle opens its cargo hold, or during the construction of the space stations. Other times, an astronaught on EVA might accidently loose various things; among lost are gloves, spanners, toolboxes, and pliers.

A major source is when something explodes in space, which has happened about 200 times over the past few decades. These explosions have generated 100 tonnes of space debris, including shards of rocket, plating, hull casing, solar panel bits, various metal..etcetera.

When China tested its anti-satellite weaponary in January 2007, the explosion produced over 2300 pieces of debri larger than a golfball, and several million pieces smaller than 1cm.

simfox: No satellites are nuclear powered in the conventional sense. They are powered by radioisotopic thermoelectric generators, which derives power from radioactive decay of isotopes. It's safe, and wont explode, melt down, go hyper-critical, or spread radioactive waste. Even if the nuclear material were to leak, then the half life would be about 80 years. Nothing, compared to the tens of thousands of years for most nuclear fuel sources.

[warrior 169]

Actually space junk is there so that aliens in there big ships find it harder to get to earth without bumping into space junk

Just proves how humanity is like, with spy satellites to spy on other humans and just dumping and littering everything and everywhere.

I hope there aren't aliens out there so we don't look like totally careless inconsiderate beings.

Ah well, we'll all go about our daily bussiness while the people in power make a load of mistakes (not saying they dont get things right though)

Jonathan

[hym 358]

Originally posted by: Boggy1

simfox: No satellites are nuclear powered in the conventional sense. They are powered by radioisotopic thermoelectric generators, which derives power from radioactive decay of isotopes. It's safe, and wont explode, melt down, go hyper-critical, or spread radioactive waste. Even if the nuclear material were to leak, then the half life would be about 80 years. Nothing, compared to the tens of thousands of years for most nuclear fuel sources.quote>

That's going to change in the future.  NASA has demonstrated viable nuclear reactors that can be loaded onto satellites and shot into space.  (They aren't planning on using them to obrit the earth, however.)

[Haljackey 17,241]

Originally posted by: Boggy1 hal: Read the rest of my post, and you can see that that is exactly the problem we are facing. It's quite serious, certainly nothing to laugh about.

quote>

Oh I have, and it was a very interesting read.  I hope this collision triggers warning signs and we can learn from this event, and quick!

Here's a zoom-in on the pic you posted, showing the satellites in low Earth orbit:

The low Earth orbit, located 2,000 km above the Earth's surface, has the highest concentration of space debris. (NASA)

If two collide, the debris could possibly strike others creating a chain reaction that could take out even more.  Let's just hope that this is not the case.

The International Space Station is at low risk at being struck by the debris, but some other communications satellites have reported a high risk of being hit. 

Source 1

Source 2

[Boggy1 45]

Space Crash Called "CATASTROPHIC"

AP – This image provided by the European Space Agency shows and artist impression of catalogued objects in low-Earth orbit.

MOSCOW – The crash of two satellites has generated an estimated tens of thousands of pieces of space junk that could circle Earth and threaten other satellites for the next 10,000 years, space experts said Friday.

One expert called the collision "a catastrophic event" that he hoped would force President Barack Obama's administration to address the long-ignored issue of debris in space.

Russian Mission Control chief Vladimir Solovyov said Tuesday's smashup of a derelict Russian military satellite and a working U.S. Iridium commercial satellite occurred in the busiest part of near-Earth space — some 500 miles (800 kilometers) above Earth.

"800 kilometers is a very popular orbit which is used by Earth-tracking and communications satellites," Solovyov told reporters Friday. "The clouds of debris pose a serious danger to them."

Solovyov said debris from the collision could stay in orbit for up to 10,000 years and even tiny fragments threaten spacecraft because both travel at such a high orbiting speed.

James Oberg, a NASA veteran who is now space consultant, described the crash over northern Siberia as "catastrophic event." NASA said it was the first-ever high-speed impact between two intact spacecraft — with the Iridium craft weighing 1,235 pounds (560 kilograms) and the Russian craft nearly a ton.

"At physical contact at orbital speeds, a hypersonic shock wave bursts outwards through the structures," Oberg said in e-mailed comments. "It literally shreds the material into confetti and detonates any fuels."

Most fragments are concentrated near the collision course, but Maj.-Gen. Alexander Yakushin, chief of staff of the Russian military's Space Forces, said some debris was thrown into other orbits, ranging from 300 to 800 miles (500-1,300 kilometers) above Earth.

David Wright at the Union of Concerned Scientists' Global Security said the collision had possibly generated tens of thousands of particles larger than 1 centimeter (half an inch), any of which could significantly damage or even destroy a satellite.

Wright, in a posting on the group's Web site, said the two large debris clouds from Tuesday's crash will spread over time, forming a shell around Earth. He likened the debris to "a shotgun blast that threatens other satellites in the region."

Meanwhile, there's no global air traffic control system that tracks the position of all satellites.

The U.S. military tracks some 17,000 pieces of space debris larger than 2 to 4 inches (5 to 10 centimeters), along with some 900 active satellites. But its main job is protecting the international space station and other manned spacecraft, and it lacks the resources to warn all satellite operators of every possible close call.

"With the amount of spacecraft and debris in orbit, the probability of collisions is going up more rapidly," said John Higginbotham, chief executive of Integral Systems Inc., a Lanham, Maryland-based company that runs ground support systems for satellites.

Oberg said the limited accuracy of tracking data and computer calculations makes it impossible to predict collisions, only their probability. He said most satellites also have little fuel to escape what most likely would be a false alarm.

"The collision offers a literally heaven-sent opportunity for the Obama administration to take forceful, visible and long-overdo measures to address a long-ignored issue of 'space debris,'" Oberg said.

In January 2007, China destroyed one of its own defunct satellites with a ballistic missile at an altitude close to that of Tuesday's collision, creating thousands of pieces of debris which threatened other spacecraft.

Both NASA and Russia's Roscosmos agencies said there was little risk to the international space station, which orbits 230 miles (370 kilometers) above Earth, far below the collision point. An unmanned Russian cargo ship docked smoothly Friday at the station, delivering water, food, fuel, oxygen and other supplies as well as a new Russian spacesuit for space walks.

American astronauts Michael Fincke and Sandra Magnus are aboard the station along with Russian Yuri Lonchakov. The crew size will be doubled to six members later this year.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090213/ap_on_sc/eu_satellite_collision

 

This is a very big deal. A single accident could kill an entire crew, and totally destroy a shuttle. NASA only has three Space Shuttles left, and they are due for retirement soon. Think of the massive setback a stick on a shuttle would have on the Agency. You can probably remember how the entire programme was put on hold for three/four years after Columbia was destroyed.

Imagine what would happen if the ISS is hit. That would be very scary. Not only a huge loss of investment, but a very real and massive danger to any and all satellites/telescopes/space craft in orbit. If something the size of the ISS were to disintegrate, it would set back the world Space Programme by decades.