Falcon 9 decay

[george7378]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT]From Spaceweather.com:

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, launched on June 4th from Cape Canaveral as a possible successor to the space shuttle, is about to reenter Earth's atmosphere. According to US Strategic Command, reentry should occur on June 27th at 0213 UT +/- 16 hours. The large uncertainty in decay time makes it impossible to say exactly where the fireball will appear.

 

[Orbinaut Pete]

Wow, that was a short lifespan!

A wonder why they don't appear to be worried about debris being a hazard to populations below?

 

[Urwumpe]

A wonder why they don't appear to be worried about debris being a hazard to populations below?

well, maybe because the ground track is not running over much populated land.

And because it has no hydrazine on board. And no encryption chips that could be interesting for China & Friends.

 

[RisingFury]

Wow, that was a short lifespan!

Well, given the thousands of offline sats and expanded rocket upper stages, I won't complain if one doesn't stay up there for 10 000 years...

 

[Urwumpe]

BTW: The reentry ground track:

http://reentrynews.aero.org/2010026a.html

 

[Andy44]

Obviously they deliberately launched it into a low altitude so it wouldn't be a long-term debris hazard. I wonder if the upper stage has restart capability, though? Can they deorbit it after a high injection?

 

[T.Neo]

Obviously they deliberately launched it into a low altitude so it wouldn't be a long-term debris hazard. I wonder if the upper stage has restart capability, though? Can they deorbit it after a high injection?

Perhaps things like LOX boiloff or the batteries running down would make control of the vehicle at thise point impossible.

 

[tblaxland]

Obviously they deliberately launched it into a low altitude so it wouldn't be a long-term debris hazard. I wonder if the upper stage has restart capability, though? Can they deorbit it after a high injection?

It definitely has restart capability since the typical geostationary satellite mission profile requires it (they tested it on this mission - IIRC it didn't work as planned). Having said that, a typical transfer orbit leaves the second stage with a low perigee so they don't stay up there for long anyway.

 

[Orbinaut Pete]

Spaceflight Now: "Falcon rocket meets fiery end after three weeks in orbit".

 

[george7378]

Thanks for the info - I didn't think the UK would see any of it; mainly because the inclination was too low.

 

[ddom2006]

I think it was designed to stay in orbit for a fairly short time though? After the batteries died it would have just become troublesome to keep tracked. We don't need yet more 'space junk' in LEO.

 

[Tycho]

I think it was designed to stay in orbit for a fairly short time though? After the batteries died it would have just become troublesome to keep tracked. We don't need yet more 'space junk' in LEO.

Given it's low orbital altitude, I'm sure this is the logic SpaceX used as well.

 

[george7378]

Plus the craft was just a dummy, so I guess it was limited in usefulness, and they wanted to get it down ready for the next Falcon launch.

 

[Star Voyager]

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