Two Satellites Collide

[Urwumpe]

Conclusion: you don't count the initial investment.

yeah... the 40 years of US ASAT and ABM development.

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/bolorion.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIM-49_Spartan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT

 

[T.Neo]

I have a brilliant idea!
Move the satillites to a lower orbit, then destroy them with ASAT weapons!
Atmospheric drag takes effect all all fragments burn up in the atmosphere.

 

[Urwumpe]

Move the satillites to a lower orbit, then destroy them with ASAT weapons!
Atmospheric drag takes effect all all fragments burn up in the atmosphere.

with which fuel?

 

[Orbinaut Pete]

From NASA:

At 11:56 a.m. EST on Tuesday, Feb. 10, two orbiting satellites collided as they passed over Siberia at an altitude of about 491 miles (790 km). The collision resulted in the formation of two large debris clouds. NASA's orbital debris experts continue to assess the risk of the debris to the agency's orbiting spacecraft, including the International Space Station. Thus far they have determined that the risk to the space station is elevated but still very small and within defined acceptable limits. The crew aboard the International Space Station was informed of this event. Listen as International Space Station Commander Mike Fincke thanks those on the ground for their efforts in monitoring this event.

› Listen to Commander Mike Fincke's message (MP3 672 Kb)

 

[T.Neo]

with which fuel?

These are the satillites that I was talking about deorbiting earlier.
Lowering the orbit should take less Dv then deorbiting.

 

[garyw]

So, are you suggesting, that in the absence of evidence, Columbia caused environmental damage?

No I am not. I am saying that the potential environmental impact of the Columbia and Challengers accidents (as well as others, including all the spent Soyuz stages that Russia dump all over the place) have not been researched.

If you object to dumping debris in the ocean, what is your alternative?
Making space unaccessable for the next 300 years?

No, I am not. I am against randomly dumping satellites into any patch of water that happens to be available as was suggested earlier.

I don't think telecom companies would like that very much. You'd have more trouble from them then a bunch of environmentalists. Space pays.

Telecom companies are quite responsible. They have the geosync graveyard orbit.


-----Post Added-----

I have a brilliant idea!
Move the satillites to a lower orbit, then destroy them with ASAT weapons!
Atmospheric drag takes effect all all fragments burn up in the atmosphere.

And violate the outer space treaty? What about satellites that die on orbit?

 

[T.Neo]

And violate the outer space treaty? What about satellites that die on orbit?

Sats that die on orbit would be a lost cause, I guess.

Maybe the satillite could perform a deorbit burn, and then after it has been certainly put on a reentry trajectory, is blown up by the missile.
And you could make the intercept altitude under 100km, and avoid problems with the outer space treaty

 

[garyw]

Sats that die on orbit would be a lost cause, I guess.

Maybe the satillite could perform a deorbit burn, and then after it has been certainly put on a reentry trajectory, is blown up by the missile.
And you could make the intercept altitude under 100km, and avoid problems with the outer space treaty

Which means you need an aircraft hanging around a deserted patch of ocean waiting to shoot down a sat thats going to be raining hot debris around it.

Oh, the treaty also forbids the development of such weapons not just the usage.

 

[T.Neo]

Which means you need an aircraft hanging around a deserted patch of ocean waiting to shoot down a sat thats going to be raining hot debris around it.

Oh, the treaty also forbids the development of such weapons not just the usage.

I would imagine the launch platform (ship, aircraft, etc) would be "uprange" to the debris and not in their path.

If this treaty forbids the development of these weapons, why didn't it stop the US from shooting down USA-193?
If you argue USA-193 wasn't ASAT, I'll argue that this isn't ASAT either.

 

[joiz]

no guys, i had two ideas, first, why not just send sats the other way? how much effort does it take to go from GEO to hyperbolic? another thing we could is just clump them all together, and then use the metal or something. or just leave it there, its easy to avoid a big lump.

 

[T.Neo]

no guys, i had two ideas, first, why not just send sats the other way? how much effort does it take to go from GEO to hyperbolic? another thing we could is just clump them all together, and then use the metal or something. or just leave it there, its easy to avoid a big lump.

From GEO to hyperbolic? Well, we already have graveyard orbits, But I'm wondering, what about using a WSB to the Moon, and using lunar gravity to escape Earth's SOI?

As for clumping the junk together I already mentioned that, but it would have to be gathered up first, which is too costly.

 

[TSPenguin]

Let's just build laser platforms and vaporize them. I guess the ISS needs windshield wipers after all

 

[T.Neo]

Let's just build laser platforms and vaporize them. I guess the ISS needs windshield wipers after all

What if that laser hits a satillite, or a shuttle, or an airplane...

And, on the subject of rolling debris into a ball, it also won't reduce spalling from smaller debris.

 

[mjessick]

no guys, i had two ideas, first, why not just send sats the other way? how much effort does it take to go from GEO to hyperbolic?

This is an exam type question. The rough answer is any low orbit is "halfway to anywhere". That is, the lowest energy circular orbit has a specific mechanical energy of -0.5 in canonical units while a parabolic orbit has zero.

In terms of velocity, you need (square_root(2) - 1) times your velocity in instantaneous delta-V to go parabolic from a circular orbit. This means add about another 41.4% from wherever you are.

with mu = the gravitational parameter,

circular_velocity = square_root(mu / radius)
well known

parabolic_velocity= square_root(2 * mu / radius)
follows from specific mechanical energy = 0 for parabolic orbit

GEO radius is about 6.6107 Earth radii, or about 1274 m/s delta-V.

From the lowest orbit at 1 Earth radius, 3075 m/s delta-V.

This is brute force 2 body thinking. You can do it a bit cheaper if you use the Sun and moon. (Google Interplanetary Transport Network.)

 

[SiberianTiger]

An interesting calculation on this collision was performed by my friend Igor Lisov who was using NORAD's TLE data.

It turns out that both spacecrafts haven't been destroyed after all, as the NORAD is providing the elements again for both of them since Feb. 12. The transformation of TLE's to Keplerian gives the following (altitudes are given for the 6378.14 km sphere representing Earth):

Cosmos-2251

Before collision: i=74.036°, Hp=769.1 km, Ha=806.4 km, P=100.660 min
After collision: i=74.040°, Hp=764.5 km, Ha=808.1 km, P=100.596 min

Iridium 33

Before collision: i=86.399°, Hp=768.6 km, Ha=786.7 km, P=100.467 min
After collision: i=86.390°, Hp=768.6 km, Ha=798.4 km, P=100.590 min

A contact circumstances analysis shows that the delta V gained by the two spacecraft can be estimated as:

for Cosmos-2251

17.3 m/s total
-1.8 m/s pro-grade
-16.9 m/s inwards
+3.3 m/s cross-plane

for Iridium 33

5.2 m/s total
+2.9 m/s pro-grade
-0.9 m/s inwards
+4.2 m/s cross-plane

So it looks like they've actually just clipped small fraction of each other and kept going. No big debris can be expected.

 

[SlyCoopersButt]

They are so often proposed yet I don't see how anyone thinks lasers will do anything except make debris matters worse. All you will end up doing is either melting objects into hundreds of thousands of tiny molten metallic spheres which harden up and then form more orbital bullets or blow them further up into fragments which will still haunt our orbits. Star Trek style Phasers/Lasers vaporizing things out of existance is not realistic.

 

[TSPenguin]

Well, you could hit the stuff with a femto second laser for... a couple of years and it should be pretty gaseous