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Sigmetnow

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Orbital Debris / Warnings
« on: March 08, 2024, 07:36:45 PM »
Most information like this will not be catastrophic, but having a separate thread could be helpful for timely dissemination of news. 
 
Let’s try to keep it free from lengthy philosophical arguments about whether we should be in space at all, since that horse has already left the barn.  Thanks.


—-
Jonathan McDowell @planet4589
 
Japan's HTV9 cargo ship visited ISS in May-Aug 2020. It left behind, attached to ISS, a 2633 kg equipment pallet carrying 9 discarded Station batteries. This pallet was heaved overboard by the Canadarm-2 on 2021 Mar 11 and is expected to make an uncontrolled reentry…. 
3/7/24, 11:38 AM  https://x.com/planet4589/status/1765779124365214060
➡️ pic.twitter.com/TbepjTS2lZ  Altitude line graph

Reentry of the EP-9 battery pallet jettisoned from ISS in 2021 is currently predicted (by Space Force) between 1230 UTC Mar 8 and 0830 UTC Mar 9. It will not totally burn up on reentry - about half a tonne of fragments will likely hit the Earth's surface.
3/7/24, 11:39 AM  https://x.com/planet4589/status/1765779232511181003
 
Updated Space-Track reentry window for EP-9: Between 1630 and 2230 UTC Mar 8.
3/8/24, 8:13 AM

If I use the central 50% of the Space-Track EP-9 reentry estimate, likely reentry regions are India, Indian Ocean, Perth, Pacific, Guatemala, Yucatan, Florida, Atlantic, Bude, Exeter, Dieppe, Reims, Strasbourg, Bavaria, Innsbruck, Slovenia, Zagreb, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Riyadh.
3/8/24, 10:56 AM  https://x.com/planet4589/status/1766130814285201482

⬇️ Here is a picture of EP-9 after jettison from ISS pic.twitter.com/VQYf9GjyeP
3/7/24, 11:40 AM  https://x.com/planet4589/status/1765779507175108708

It's not aimed at all. It was jettisoned in 2021 and left in orbit, with no way to predict where it would eventually come down. Imagine throwing a trash bag in the ocean and watching it float off - it will eventually wash ashore, but no way to know where.
3/8/24, 10:59 AM. https://x.com/planet4589/status/1766131756984369186

Flo @FloSpacenerd
@planet4589 Even though the risk is extremely low, the Federal Office for Civil Protection in Germany has issued a corresponding warning 👀
warnung.bund.de/meldungen/mow.… pic.twitter.com/0JG4K06eSH  ⬇️
3/7/24, 12:10 PM  https://x.com/flospacenerd/status/1765786995517726783
 
“Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance, National Warning Centre 1 Bonn Germany reports: Information on the entry of debris into the earth's atmosphere - from 07.03.2024 15:52.

“Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance, National Warning Centre 1 Bonn reports: In the period between the noon of the 08 March and the noon of the 09 March, the re-entry of a larger space object into the Earth's atmosphere is expected, which may fragment.
The object is battery packages of the International Space Station ISS.
Light phenomena or the perception of a sonic bang are possible. According to current information, the probability of the encounter of debris in Germany can be estimated as very low. If the risk increases, you will receive new information. An overview of the probable overflight path at this time can be found here:
https://bbk.bund.de/ueberflug


< Couldn't they send it back to Earth using dragon? or maybe Cygnus? so that it had a planned re entry
Jonathan McDowell
Too heavy for those vehicles. EP-1 to EP-8 were deorbited with the Japanese HTV, but they didn't have any left
3/8/24, 12:26 PM. https://x.com/planet4589/status/1766153492320632857
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #1 on: March 08, 2024, 09:08:51 PM »
Jonathan McDowell @planet4589
EP-9 has probably reentered by now, most likely over the Pacific Ocean
3/8/24, 2:45 PM  https://x.com/planet4589/status/1766188608757571744
 
< So I can go inside? Its freezing 🥶

——
EDIT
Jonathan McDowell @planet4589
The EP-9 equipment pallet reentered at 1929 UTC over the Gulf of Mexico between Cancun and Cuba. This was witih the previous prediction window but a little to the northeast of the 'most likely' part of the path. A couple minutes later reentry and it would have reached Ft Myers [Florida]
3/8/24, 4:18 PM. https://x.com/planet4589/status/1766211941922415053
« Last Edit: March 08, 2024, 10:27:36 PM by Sigmetnow »
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SeanAU

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #2 on: March 09, 2024, 02:45:20 AM »
Pails into insignificance to the endless Debris being dumped on our heads through the internet, the media and this forum ..... I know how to Block posters ... how does one block entire Threads?

« Last Edit: March 09, 2024, 01:28:07 PM by SeanAU »
It's wealth, constantly seeking more wealth, to better seek still more wealth. Building wealth off of destruction. That's what's consuming the world. And is driving humans crazy at the same time.

trm1958

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #3 on: March 16, 2024, 11:53:08 AM »
Pails into insignificance to the endless Debris being dumped on our heads through the internet, the media and this forum ..... I know how to Block posters ... how does one block entire Threads?
Just don’t click on them.

LRC1962

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #4 on: March 24, 2024, 07:58:19 PM »
Going back I think almost 30 years ago, I knew a lady who part of her PhD work, I believe, memory is fuzzy on that, was tracting all the space junk. Imagine what it is like now. The reason for it was not only the junk falling the earth, but even a bigger problem was active satellites getting hit and potentially knocking them down to earth.
"All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second,  it is violently opposed; and Third, it is accepted as self-evident."
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be cause

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #5 on: March 25, 2024, 09:05:44 AM »
I should split the difference .. rfh1960 .

 I once thought I was witnessing the end of the world , but it turned out to be a whole bunch of junk that flew overhead , impressive fireball and multiple sonic booms . Freaked the pheasants too .:)
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #6 on: March 25, 2024, 10:32:48 PM »
The U.S. Space Surveillance Network tracks satellites, space debris and other objects in lower orbits, and Deep Space objects, generally asteroids and comets. 
 
Satellite operators communicate with each other to jointly mitigate potential collisions by altering their satellites’ orbits when necessary.  Some operators make their orbital data publicly available.
 
Newer satellites such as Starlink “autonomously maneuver to avoid collisions with orbital debris and other spacecraft. This capability reduces human error and provides exceptional reliability, exceeding the industry standard by an order of magnitude.”
https://www.starlink.com/technology

A few links:
 
U.S.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Surveillance_Network

https://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov

ESA:
https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Space_Surveillance_and_Tracking_-_SST_Segment

Global, on 𝕏:
Astronomer Jonathan McDowell  https://x.com/planet4589

 
=====

Pails into insignificance to the endless Debris being dumped on our heads through the internet, the media and this forum ..... I know how to Block posters ... how does one block entire Threads?
Just don’t click on them.
 
Don’t. Look. Up.
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morganism

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #7 on: April 03, 2024, 11:11:02 PM »
Moment part a CHINESE rocket explodes over California after rouge reentry through Earth's atmosphere - months after spy balloon fiasco         (hours after a SpaceX launch at Vandenburg)

    A rocket exploded over California as it reentered the Earth's atmosphere
    The rocket is the Chinese-owned Shenzhou-15 orbital module

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13267795/Chinese-rocket-explodes-California-reentry-Earth.html
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #8 on: April 05, 2024, 06:12:19 PM »
March 8, 2024.  See post #1 above. A large battery pallet released from the ISS in 2021 reentered the atmosphere. 
Now it appears a piece of that debris came down in Florida.
Quote
Jonathan McDowell @planet4589
The EP-9 equipment pallet reentered at 1929 UTC over the Gulf of Mexico between Cancun and Cuba. This was witih the previous prediction window but a little to the northeast of the 'most likely' part of the path. A couple minutes later reentry and it would have reached Ft Myers
3/8/24, 4:18 PM  https://x.com/planet4589/status/1766211941922415053
 
 
Alejandro Otero
Hello. Looks like one of those pieces missed Ft Myers and landed in my house in Naples.
Tore through the roof and went thru 2 floors. Almost [hit] my son.
Can you please assist with getting NASA to connect with me? I’ve left messages and emails without a response.
3/15/24, https://x.com/alejandro0tero/status/1768729031493427225
⬇️ Photos below, more at the link pic.twitter.com/Yi29f3EwyV 
 
Jonathan McDowell @planet4589
NASA are not the right people to contact. I have passed on this to the experts at the Aerospace Corporation who study this sort of thing.
3/15/24, https://x.com/planet4589/status/1768790542224068738

 
Space Junk Just Fell on Your Home, Now What?
A Florida man, whose home was hit by apparent space junk faced a struggle to be heard, raising questions about the correct procedures and accountability.
Quote
On March 8, a small, cylinder-shaped object fell from the skies and crashed through the roof of a family home in Naples, Florida. Alejandro Otero, the homeowner, suspected it came from space but he wasn’t sure what he needed to do get NASA’s attention and be taken seriously.

“Who do you call, right?” Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center, who tracks atmospheric reentries, told Gizmodo. McDowell was contacted by Florida homeowner Otero on X, and in turn helped him get in touch with someone at The Aerospace Corporation, a non-profit research and development center.

“There is no standard protocol to report suspected space debris,” The Aerospace Corporation told Gizmodo in an emailed statement. “Aerospace has, on several occasions, been asked to forward information to the appropriate government organization, as was the case here.”

NASA and the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command are the most common U.S. organizations that handle these events, the statement added.

The Aerospace Corporation investigates reentry debris and, according to McDowell, “know what they’re doing.” And because “they’re a small enough organization, that query won’t get lost, unlike at NASA,” he added. Therefore, that would be a good place to start.


In the case of Otero, for example, the Florida homeowner might be seeking compensation from NASA for the damage done to his home. In response to Gizmodo’s request for comment, Otero’s lawyer reached out on his behalf and stated that there is a pending claim.

In terms of who’s liable in that case, that’s up for question since the batteries were launched to the space station by the Japanese space agency JAXA. It’s not immediately clear who should be responsible for the potential damage caused by the space debris.


“As space activity increases, you worry that you’re going to see more of this,” McDowell said. “On the other hand, people are getting more conservative about letting big things like [the ISS pallet] reenter. I would say it’s an ongoing risk, but I’m hoping that we won’t see a big increase in it, even as activity ramps up,” he added. …
https://gizmodo.com/space-junk-florida-iss-damage-protocols-liability-1851385397

 
It’s becoming a business!  Several companies are working on small “space tug” craft that could approach and attach to dead satellites and help control their reentry.  SpaceX has long shown a “chomper” version of Starship (see below) and said it would be possible to capture large objects and return them to earth.
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #9 on: April 07, 2024, 03:15:21 PM »
Quote
Jonathan McDowell @planet4589
 
A 1-tonne Vostok-2M upper stage launched by the USSR in Dec 1970 reentered on Apr 6 over Antarctica after 53.5 years in orbit.
 
4/6/24, 11:39 PM. https://x.com/planet4589/status/1776817089761665042
 
< Do the “pulses” in its descent correlate to years of increased solar activity?
JM: Exactly
 
<< It went from 400km to burnup in like a year? 😮
JM:  Yep, that's solar max atmospheric density for you

JM: Space Force TIP estimate is 29.4W 75.0S in the Weddell Sea. Rough trajectory estimate shown here
 
4/7/24, 12:05 AM  https://x.com/planet4589/status/1776823543348559958
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morganism

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #10 on: April 11, 2024, 11:09:37 PM »
Nasa ‘shocked’ by how close Russian spacecraft came to hitting satellite

A Russian satellite was just metres from hitting a Nasa counterpart in a “shocking” near-miss that could have put lives at risk, the US space agency has claimed.

Pam Melroy, the deputy administrator of Nasa, said experts had been “really scared” by the incident on Feb 28 because it was not possible to manoeuvre either satellite.

The narrow escape happened when the defunct Russian spy satellite Cosmos 2221 drifted uncomfortably close to Nasa’s Timed (Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics) satellite, which monitors Earth’s atmosphere.

Colonel Melroy, a former astronaut, said that if the satellites had collided it would have led to thousands of bullet-fast pieces of debris shooting around Earth and warned the issue was ‘‘monumental’’.

Speaking at the Space Foundation’s Space Symposium in Colorado, she said: “It was very shocking personally and for all of us at Nasa.

“On February 28 a Nasa spacecraft called Timed and a Russian satellite, neither of them manoeuvrable, were expected to make a close path

“We recently learnt that the path ended up being less than 10 metres apart, less than the distance of me to the front row.

“Had the two satellites collided we would have seen debris generation, tiny shards travelling at 10,000 miles per hour, waiting to puncture a hole in another spacecraft and potentially putting human lives at risk.

“It’s kind of sobering to think that something that’s the size of the eraser on the end of your pencil could wreak such havoc – but it can. We’re all worried about this. Timed really scared us.”


On Tuesday, Nasa launched its Space Sustainability Strategy, which aims to better map and monitor satellites and debris, and keep orbits as clear as possible.

There are currently more than 10,000 satellites orbiting the Earth – a four-fold increase since 2019 – and numbers are set to grow exponentially.

Some 400,000 satellites have been approved globally for low Earth orbit, with SpaceX alone poised to launch another 44,000 for its Starlink internet constellation.

Experts have predicted that once all the planned internet constellations are operational there will be around 16,000 decaying satellites at any one time that will need to come out of orbit.

A Russian satellite was just metres from hitting a Nasa counterpart in a “shocking” near-miss that could have put lives at risk, the US space agency has claimed.

Pam Melroy, the deputy administrator of Nasa, said experts had been “really scared” by the incident on Feb 28 because it was not possible to manoeuvre either satellite.

The narrow escape happened when the defunct Russian spy satellite Cosmos 2221 drifted uncomfortably close to Nasa’s Timed (Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics) satellite, which monitors Earth’s atmosphere.

Colonel Melroy, a former astronaut, said that if the satellites had collided it would have led to thousands of bullet-fast pieces of debris shooting around Earth and warned the issue was ‘‘monumental’’.

Speaking at the Space Foundation’s Space Symposium in Colorado, she said: “It was very shocking personally and for all of us at Nasa.

“On February 28 a Nasa spacecraft called Timed and a Russian satellite, neither of them manoeuvrable, were expected to make a close path

“We recently learnt that the path ended up being less than 10 metres apart, less than the distance of me to the front row.

“Had the two satellites collided we would have seen debris generation, tiny shards travelling at 10,000 miles per hour, waiting to puncture a hole in another spacecraft and potentially putting human lives at risk.

“It’s kind of sobering to think that something that’s the size of the eraser on the end of your pencil could wreak such havoc – but it can. We’re all worried about this. Timed really scared us.”


On Tuesday, Nasa launched its Space Sustainability Strategy, which aims to better map and monitor satellites and debris, and keep orbits as clear as possible.

There are currently more than 10,000 satellites orbiting the Earth – a four-fold increase since 2019 – and numbers are set to grow exponentially.

Some 400,000 satellites have been approved globally for low Earth orbit, with SpaceX alone poised to launch another 44,000 for its Starlink internet constellation.

Experts have predicted that once all the planned internet constellations are operational there will be around 16,000 decaying satellites at any one time that will need to come out of orbit.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/russian-spacecraft-near-miss-nasa-143230973.html


https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/28/european-space-agency-aeolus-weather-satellite-return-earth/
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #11 on: April 13, 2024, 02:52:51 AM »
Astroscale’s ADRAS-J mission enters next phase in orbit
Jeff Foust April 12, 2024
Quote
COLORADO SPRINGS — Astroscale is moving into the next phase of an inspection mission as its spacecraft approaches a derelict upper stage in low Earth orbit.

Astroscale announced April 11 that its Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan (ADRAS-J) spacecraft, launched Feb. 18, had moved to within several hundred kilometers of an upper stage from an H-2A launch in 2009 left in low Earth orbit and was now relying on its own sensors to continue its approach.


The mission milestone was a switch from absolute navigation, where the spacecraft was maneuvered by ground controllers based on knowledge of its position as well as that of the upper stage, to “Angles-Only Navigation,” where ADRAS-J detected the upper stage using onboard cameras and calculated its relative position.

“The goal here is proving out those core capabilities for on-orbit servicing but also as a precursor for the second phase,” he said. That second phase would be to send a spacecraft to capture and deorbit the stage.

The Japanese government, which awarded Astroscale a contract for ADRAS-J in 2020, has yet to select a company to perform that second stage, although it has given Astroscale a study contract for it. Blackerby said he expected JAXA to announce a contract soon, which would allow the mission to fly in the next two years.

While ADRAS-J and a potential second phase mission are part of the Japanese space agency JAXA’s Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration, the technologies being demonstrated have broader applicability, he said. “We’re not just going up there to grab the debris. We’re going up there to prove that we can do this approach and capture, and can then do a whole host of things: refuel, repair, relocate, remove.”

ADRAS-J is one of several projects in development by Astroscale, based on Tokyo and with offices in several countries, including the United Kingdom and United States. Among them are ELSA-M, a spacecraft that will dock with a OneWeb satellite and remove it from orbit; Life Extension In-Orbit, or LEXI, which will dock with GEO satellites to provide maneuvering and attitude control; and a prototype of a refueling spacecraft being developed under a U.S. Space Force contract.

Technologies being demonstrated on ADRAS-J will be used on missions being developed by Astroscale’s U.K. and U.S. businesses, within export control restrictions. “The whole point of having a global company is being able to share best practices, and to be able to share resources and technologies among the team so that they can improve those missions,” he said.

Blackerby, who just completed a term as president of the satellite servicing trade group CONFERS, said he has been pleased by progress in some of the countries Astroscale operates in to address regulatory uncertainty for the field, such as changes in mission licensing regimes in Japan and the five-year deorbit rule adopted by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in 2022.

CONFERS now has 82 members, which he sees as a sign of the growing interest in satellite servicing. However, he argued that will require continued government support in terms of regulations as well as missions like the JAXA-sponsored ADRAS-J.

“What’s going to keep all of those companies alive and keep this whole industry moving? It’s going to be interest and involvement from government agencies,” he said. “We’re seeing the interest in terms of both shaping regulations and policies and putting money in budgets to start proving this out.”…
https://spacenews.com/astroscales-adras-j-mission-enters-next-phase/

⬇️ Graphs of the two craft by Jonathan McDowell @planet4589
— Here is height vs time pic.twitter.com/eg6Tze6l9a 
— Here is separation of the two vehicles vs time pic.twitter.com/1Oi2GkW9ze 
 
And: An illustration of Astroscale’s ADRAS-J inspector satellite approaching an H-2A upper stage in low Earth orbit. Credit: Astroscale
« Last Edit: April 13, 2024, 02:58:02 AM by Sigmetnow »
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #12 on: April 16, 2024, 02:41:39 AM »
March 8, 2024.  See post #1 above. A large battery pallet released from the ISS in 2021 reentered the atmosphere. 
Now it appears a piece of that debris came down in Florida. …

Marcia Smith @SpcPlcyOnline
NASA confirms that the object that hit a house in Naples, FL was indeed from the ISS battery pallet that they expected to completely disintegrate during reentry.
4/15/24, 5:13 PM. https://x.com/spcplcyonline/status/1779981435996188720

NASA Completes Analysis of Recovered Space Object
April 15, 2024
Quote
… the agency determined the debris to be a stanchion from the NASA flight support equipment used to mount the batteries on the cargo pallet. The object is made of the metal alloy Inconel, weighs 1.6 pounds, is 4 inches in height and 1.6 inches in diameter. …
https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2024/04/15/nasa-completes-analysis-of-recovered-space-object/
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morganism

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #13 on: April 21, 2024, 10:37:02 PM »
(may be a new tool to predict when solar phys is fluctuating)

Scientists unlocked solar patterns that could help understand space weather
The sun is emitting high energy radiation in weird patterns

(snip)
Potential tool to predict solar activity

Predicting an extreme solar event is like anticipating an earthquake. Processes below the surface start to shift and can trigger activity on the surface, but it’s difficult to forecast exactly when and where.
Advertisement

“This study helps extend our knowledge of where exactly on the sun’s surface the gamma rays are originating,” said particle physicist Mehr Un Nisa, who was not involved in the study.

Previous studies also hinted that gamma rays did not glow uniformly across the sun, but this is the first study to show a change during solar peak activity.

Gamma rays could help provide an early look at processes coming to surface and give clues about the overall condition of the sun, Orlando said. For instance, an increase in gamma radiation at the poles could signal the sun’s magnetic field is in the process of flipping and that the sun’s activity is increasing — leading to more solar eruptions that could hit Earth.

Future studies could also look at how gamma radiation changes before a large solar flare, Linden said, potentially using observations as a forecast tool — much like determining if it will rain on Earth from atmospheric conditions.
(more)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/04/21/gamma-rays-solar-patterns-space-weather/
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NeilT

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #14 on: April 23, 2024, 06:35:17 PM »
If people are going to Mars, predictions on solar events are going to be important.  As are safe zones in the craft themselves.
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #15 on: May 10, 2024, 09:10:12 PM »
—- SWPC Issues Its First G4 Watch Since 2005
published: Thursday, May 09, 2024 20:38 UTC
On Thursday, May 9, 2024, the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center issued a Severe (G4) Geomagnetic Storm Watch
 
 At least five earth-directed coronal mass ejections (CMEs) were observed and expected to arrive as early as midday Friday, May 10, 2024, and persist through Sunday, May 12, 2024. Several strong flares have been observed over the past few days and were associated with a large and magnetically complex sunspot cluster (NOAA region 3664), which is 16 times the diameter of Earth.

https://www.spaceweather.gov/news/swpc-issues-its-first-g4-watch-2005

KEY MESSAGES: A Severe (G4) Geomagnetic Storm is LIKELY - possibly as early as later today and continuing through the weekend; exact timing remains somewhat uncertain. At least seven earth-directed Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) are in transit

IMPACTS: HF communication, GPS, power grids (voltage control), spacecraft, satellite navigation, and other technologies may be affected.
Critical infrastructure operators have been notified.


 
Only three Severe geomagnetic storms have been observed during this solar cycle which began in December 2019. The last G4 (Severe) was on March 23, 2024, and the last G5 (Extreme) was the Halloween Storms in October 2003. That G5 resulted in power outages in Sweden and damaged power transformers in South Africa.

———-
 
Lindy Elkins-Tanton
Here's the SpaceWeatherLive.com hourly @NASA image of the big sunspot cluster that is causing today's G4 geomagnetic storm… ⬇️  pic.twitter.com/eZt3E65GVW
 5/10/24, 2:49 PM  https://x.com/ltelkins/status/1789004947536900136
 
https://www.spaceweather.gov/homepage
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #16 on: May 11, 2024, 01:25:10 PM »
Major geomagnetic solar storm happening right now. Biggest in a long time. Starlink satellites are under a lot of pressure, but holding up so far.  pic.twitter.com/TrEv5Acli2 
5/11/24, 2:01 AM. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1789173902289338518
 
(My posts are being done via Starlink.)
« Last Edit: May 11, 2024, 01:33:47 PM by Sigmetnow »
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #17 on: May 11, 2024, 04:48:04 PM »
NOAA says ‘extreme’ Solar storm will persist through the weekend
So far disruptions from the geomagnetic storm appear to be manageable.
Eric Berger - 5/11/2024, 9:44 AM
Quote
After a night of stunning auroras across much of the United States and Europe on Friday, a severe geomagnetic storm is likely to continue through at least Sunday, forecasters said.

The Space Weather Prediction Center at the US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Prediction Center observed that 'Extreme' G5 conditions were ongoing as of Saturday morning due to heightened Solar activity.

Good and bad effects
For many observers on Friday night the heightened Solar activity was welcomed. Large areas of the United States, Europe, and other locations unaccustomed to displays of the aurora borealis saw vivid lights as energetically charged particles from the Solar storm passed through the Earth's atmosphere. Brilliantly pink skies were observed as far south as Texas. Given the forecast for ongoing Solar activity, another night of extended northern lights is possible again on Saturday.


There were also some harmful effects. According to NOAA, there have been some irregularities in power grid transmissions, and degraded satellite communications and GPS services. Users of SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet constellation have reported slower download speeds. Early on Saturday morning, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the company's Starlink satellites were "under a lot of pressure, but holding up so far."

This is the most intense Solar storm recorded in more than two decades. The last G5 event—the most extreme category of such storms—occurred in October 2003 when there were electricity issues reported in Sweden and South Africa.

Should this storm intensify over the next day or two, scientists say the major risks include more widespread power blackouts, disabled satellites, and long-term damage of GPS networks.


The most intense geomagnetic storm occurred in 1859, during the so-called Carrington Event. This produced auroral lights around the world, and caused fires in multiple telegraph stations—at the time there were 125,000 miles of telegraph lines in the world.
According to one research paper on the Carrington Event, "At its height, the aurora was described as a blood or deep crimson red that was so bright that one 'could read a newspaper by'."
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/noaa-says-extreme-solar-storm-will-persist-through-the-weekend/
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #18 on: May 12, 2024, 02:54:27 AM »
NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center
The historic geomagnetic storm continues... pic.twitter.com/LoMh0OomLu   
5/11/24, 5:43 PM  https://x.com/nwsswpc/status/1789411152566395366
 
• REPORTED IMPACTS: There have been preliminary reports of power grid irregularities, degradation to high-frequency communications, GPS, and possibly satellite navigation.
• AURORA: Weather permitting, aurora will likely be visible over a large portion of the United States again tonight and Sunday night.
• SUNSPOT: The threat of additional strong flares and CMEs will persist until the large and magnetically complex sunspot cluster (NOAA Region 3664) rotates out of view, most likely by Tuesday.

=====

📸Trevor Mahlmann🚀
self portrait with me and my mom watching the aurora borealis over the Indiana dunes tonight right at the peak of activity! pic.twitter.com/TNRkoefUky 
5/11/24, 12:22 AM  https://x.com/trevormahlmann/status/1789149093538783331
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #19 on: June 14, 2024, 03:53:18 PM »
Debris removal test

⬇️ photo below pic.twitter.com/gEffk73Jzs
Neat new image of a dead Japanese rocket in orbit taken by @astroscale_HQ's ADRAS-J spacecraft, ahead of possible removal in the coming years, taken from a distance of 50 metres.   

 
Historic Approach to Space Debris: Astroscale’s ADRAS-J Closes in by 50 Meters
New image reveals stunning details of rocket upper stage taken from fixed-point observation.
 
Tokyo, Japan, Jun. 14, 2024 – Astroscale Japan Inc. (“Astroscale Japan”), a subsidiary of Astroscale Holdings Inc. (“Astroscale”), a market leader in satellite servicing and long-term orbital sustainability across all orbits, announced that its commercial debris inspection demonstration satellite, Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan (ADRAS-J), has achieved another unprecedented milestone for a commercial company. ADRAS-J successfully completed the safe and controlled approach to an unprepared space debris object – a rocket upper stage – to a relative distance of approximately 50 meters, collecting further images and data while maintaining a controlled fixed point relative position from the upper stage. This second image released from the mission, taken in May, follows the first image released on April 26, captured from several hundred meters behind the debris.

ADRAS-J is a groundbreaking mission as the world’s first attempt to safely approach, characterize and survey the state of an existing piece of large debris through Rendezvous and Proximity Operations[1]. ADRAS-J is designed to rendezvous with an unprepared Japanese upper stage rocket body (approximately 11 meters long, 4 meters in diameter, and weighing approximately 3 tons), demonstrate proximity operations, and gather images to assess the rocket body’s movement and condition of the structure. Unprepared objects in orbit pose an additional challenge as they are not designed with any technologies that enable docking or potential servicing or removal.

The ADRAS-J mission has reached several milestones since rendezvous operations began on February 22. During this phase, the ADRAS-J spacecraft started maneuvering towards the upper stage client’s orbit using GPS and ground-based observation data. By April 9, ADRAS-J had successfully detected the client with its on-board visual camera and started the proximity approach phase, underscored by starting Angles Only Navigation, a navigation method used to estimate relative position and velocity through the servicer’s on-board cameras. When ADRAS-J was within a few kilometers of the debris, the team successfully transitioned relative navigation control to the on-board infrared camera with Astroscale developed Model Matching Navigation (MMN) algorithms. This navigation method estimates relative distance by comparing captured images or data of the client to a pre-existing model. On April 16, ADRAS-J began using MMN to process data on the client’s characteristics, such as the shape and attitude, and successfully approached a relative distance of several hundred meters by April 17. In May, ADRAS-J safely and successfully approached the client to approximately 50 meters and conducted fixed-point observations.

The major mission highlights include:
Feb. 18: launch and start of in-orbit operations.
Feb. 22: start of the rendezvous phase.
Apr. 9: start of Angles Only Navigation and proximity approach from several hundred kilometers.
Apr. 16: start of MMN relative navigation techniques.
Apr. 17: approach to the client within several hundred meters.
May 23: approach to the client within 50 meters.
In the next phase, ADRAS-J will attempt to capture additional images of the upper stage through various controlled close approach operations. The images and data collected are expected to be crucial in better understanding the debris and providing critical information for future removal efforts.
END
[1] Based on internal research, as of May 2024.
____________________________________________________________________________________
About Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration (CRD2)
Astroscale Japan has been selected by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and contracted as the partner for CRD2 Phase I. This phase aims to demonstrate technologies for removing large pieces of debris, among other applications, and has led to the development of ADRAS-J.

CRD2 represents a new initiative by JAXA, with two primary goals: to develop debris removal technologies to address the growing space debris issue and to foster the commercial endeavors of Japanese companies. This project is carried out with JAXA’s support, including technical guidance, testing facilities, and the rights to research findings’ intellectual property.
For more information, please visit the CRD2 website: https://www.kenkai.jaxa.jp/crd2/project/
____________________________________________________________________________________
About Astroscale
Founded in 2013, Astroscale is developing innovative and scalable solutions across the spectrum of on-orbit servicing, including life extension, in-space space situational awareness, end-of-life, and active debris removal, to create sustainable space systems and mitigate the growing and hazardous buildup of debris in space. Astroscale is also defining the economics of on-orbit servicing and working with government and commercial stakeholders to develop norms, regulations, and incentives for the responsible use of space.

Headquartered in Japan, Astroscale has an international presence with subsidiaries in the United Kingdom, the United States, France, and Israel. Astroscale is a rapidly expanding venture company, working to advance safe and sustainable growth in space and solve a growing environmental concern.
Find out more about Astroscale at www.astroscale.com.

https://astroscale.com/historic-approach-to-space-debris-astroscales-adras-j-closes-in-by-50-meters/
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #20 on: June 15, 2024, 06:34:22 PM »
Debris removal test
Neat new image of a dead Japanese rocket in orbit taken by @astroscale_HQ's ADRAS-J spacecraft, ahead of possible removal in the coming years, taken from a distance of 50 metres.

Elon Musk
@Cmdr_Hadfield @astroscale_HQ
We could make a hungry hippo version of Starship to chomp and deorbit space debris
6/15/24, 12:03 PM. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1802008949715300794

——-
⬇️ Image from 2017


=====
 
NASA
Media: On June 20 at 3:30pm ET, we'll host a virtual briefing discussing a recent tabletop exercise to simulate responses to a hypothetical asteroid impact threat. This exercise, conducted about every two years, supports our planetary defense strategy: go.nasa.gov/4co00Cn 
 
6/14/24, https://x.com/nasa/status/1801709157956940140

Quote
This year’s exercise was the first to include participation by NASA’s international collaborators in planetary defense and the first to have the benefit of actual data from NASA’s successful DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission, the world’s first in-space technology demonstration for defending Earth against potential asteroid impacts.

Video of the briefing will stream live on NASA TV and NASA’s YouTube channel.
« Last Edit: June 15, 2024, 06:44:22 PM by Sigmetnow »
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morganism

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #21 on: June 20, 2024, 01:50:23 AM »
HNews

Understanding the misunderstood Kessler Syndrome

Nation-states are blowing up satellites. Companies are launching megaconstellations of thousands of satellites. Dead rocket stages whiz around the planet for years. And yet, the International Space Station hasn’t been destroyed, payloads reach deep space unharmed, and we’re not trapped on Earth — at least not by debris. Either calamity is not upon us or we just don’t recognize it. Jon Kelvey takes the measure of Kessler Syndrome.

https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/features/understanding-the-misunderstood-kessler-syndrome/

....



....


The third & fourth factor are whether the satellites are actively avoiding collisions and whether the satellites are in a self-clearing orbit.

Depending on the assumptions you make, we could have billions or even trillions of Starlink satellites without triggering Kessler simply because

- Starlink satellites are actively controlled and steer to avoid collisions. Yes there are sometimes a couple of failed Starlinks in orbit, but since the active ones avoid the dead ones, you have to calculate the risk of one dead satellite hitting another dead satellite. And that's less than random because they quickly decay out of their crowded orbital plane to a different less crowded one.

- dead Starlinks are in a self-clearing orbit, deorbiting in under 5 years. As the article indicates Kessler is a decades-long process. Which can't happen if the satellites don't stay in orbit that long.

- most dead Starlinks aren't completely dead, or give alerts before they die, allowing SpaceX to actively deorbit them safely and quickly

- the vast majority of particles from a collision in a self-clearing orbit result in immediate clearing. If the original dead Starlink that would take 5 years to clear suddenly fragments, most fragments de-orbit within a single orbit (90 minutes). Elastic deformation reduces their velocity, lowering the orbit. Half of fragments are toward a lower orbit. The other half only boost apogee and either lower perigee or leave it unchanged. Being smaller, their surface area / mass ratio increases, reducing deorbit times.

Basically, Kessler is not a concern at VLEO altitudes. Unfortunately most proposed Starlink competitors cannot afford to launch the thousands of satellites necessary for a viable VLEO constellation and instead are launching dozens or hundreds into LEO orbits which aren't self-clearing and do pose a Kessler concern.

> Half of fragments are toward a lower orbit. The other half only boost apogee and either lower perigee or leave it unchanged.

I think this is something that's not intuitive to othe average person. Basically: a collision can change an object that's in a circular orbit into an elliptical orbit with a higher apogee. But it can't circularize the new orbit higher without a 2nd "burn"[1].

Which means that if a satellite that would passively deorbit in a short amount of time is in a collision, it is necessarily true that all of the fragments will also deorbit in a small multiple of that time.

> Basically, Kessler is not a concern at VLEO altitudes. Unfortunately most proposed Starlink competitors cannot afford to launch the thousands of satellites necessary for a viable VLEO constellation and instead are launching dozens or hundreds into LEO orbits which aren't self-clearing and do pose a Kessler concern.

Thankfully, Kuiper will be just above Starlink. From what I understand, their passive deorbit times are ~10-20 years.

The real problem is with OneWeb and the upcoming Telesat Lightspeed which are both at 1000km+. It sounds like OneWeb was planning on a greatly expanded next generation constellation, but they've since scaled their plans back and are incorporating bandwidth from geostationary satellites into their offerings.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40716235
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #22 on: June 21, 2024, 04:13:39 PM »
A Florida family has formally asked NASA to pay for its damages after a chunk of an ISS battery pack smashed through the roof of their home last March. It’s the first time this has happened.
 
Family whose roof was damaged by space debris files claims against NASA
"Whatever NASA does is going to send a strong signal to the space industry."
Eric Berger - 6/21/2024, 9:02 AM
Quote
The legal case is unprecedented—no one has evidently made such a claim against NASA before. How the space agency responds will set a precedent, and that may be important in a world where there is ever more activity in orbit, with space debris and vehicles increasingly making uncontrolled reentries through Earth's atmosphere. …
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/06/family-whose-roof-was-damaged-by-space-debris-files-claims-against-nasa/
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #23 on: June 25, 2024, 08:43:26 PM »
Not quite ‘orbital.’  But huge rocket debris falling from the sky shortly after launch.

Abhi Tripathi @SpaceAbhi
This seems a lot worse than a Dragon trunk
6/22/24, https://x.com/spaceabhi/status/1804630737955758546

Quote
China 'N Asia Spaceflight 🚀𝕏 🛰️
🚀 Liftoff at 07:00UTC on June 22, Long March 2C launched Space Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM) X-ray telescope from Xichang.
6/22/24, 3:50 AM
➡️ pic.twitter.com/mgf7jkgdG4   30 sec.  Toxic orange rocket exhaust at liftoff from a site between mountains.
 
   —-
🙀 Behind the scenes of SVOM launch
6/22/24, 11:51 AM. https://x.com/cnspaceflight/status/1804542638034661522
 
➡️ pic.twitter.com/5fiM4oz2GY  10 sec. Huge booster trailing toxic orange smoke plummets to the ground not far from people on a village road.
 
Another angle:  ➡️ pic.twitter.com/0XGi4hqJe7  20 sec.

Excerpt of lengthy “Explanation” of sorts from “Chinese Aerospace Enthusiasts”
Quote
The Long March 2C Y50 first-stage booster, for the SVOM mission, fell in Guiding County (贵定县) in the province of Guizhou (贵州) within the designated hazard areas. However, the local government failed to evacuate the surrounding areas properly before launch, the booster hit the ground not long after 3pm local time. Evacuation responsibilities fall on the local governments after state-owned and private companies release information regarding hazard areas.
6/22/24, https://x.com/phazzeeyeehaw/status/1804588020231770142
 
< "We're gonna drop a booster on your village and it's your fault if you get hit because you didn't evacuate" is certainly an interesting take. I guarantee if a US company dropped a booster on a town and blamed local govmnt you'd be talking about how dystopian and evil America is.
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #24 on: June 27, 2024, 02:29:55 PM »
Quote
International Space Station
@Space_Station
 
Shortly after 9 p.m. EDT, @NASA instructed crews aboard the space station to shelter in their respective spacecraft as a standard precautionary measure after it was informed of a satellite break-up at an altitude near the station’s earlier Wednesday. Mission Control continued to monitor the path of the debris, and after about an hour, the crew was cleared to exit their spacecraft and the station resumed normal operations.
6/26/24, 11:08 PM https://x.com/space_station/status/1806162645424189945
 
Quote
Michael Sheetz
 
NASA didn't specify the satellite in its statement but, per both @US_SpaceCom & @LeoLabs_Space, the ISS shelter-in-spacecraft order given yesterday was due to the non-operational Russian satellite RESURS-P1:
6/27/24, 8:18 AM https://x.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1806301048694321195
 
⬇️ pic.twitter.com/KFp395Q6Qm
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #25 on: June 28, 2024, 03:52:32 AM »
Quote
Jonathan McDowell @planet4589
 
The Resurs P-1 debris event now reported to have 100+ pieces. Still most likely an internal event; however, ground track does pass near Plesetsk during the reported event window. I haven't seen reports of NOTAMs that would suggest a Nudol' ASAT launch, but I can't rule it out
6/27/24, https://x.com/planet4589/status/1806314352305172544
   —
Another comment on Resurs-P1; the sat is 5600 kg. That's huge. It would be crazy and very bad of the Russians to use such a massive sat as an antisatellite target. Now it may be true that the Russian govt is indeed crazy and v. bad, but still, am leaning towards 'not ASAT'.
6/27/24, https://x.com/planet4589/status/1806333953617334688
   — 
Here is the orbit history of Resurs-P1. It stopped orbit maintenance burns in 2017, but carried on operating until early 2022. It was expected to reenter later this year even before the debris event.
➡️ pic.twitter.com/Hb4JAYqjV9  Graph of the orbital height over time.

=====
 
—- NEWS: NASA has awarded @SpaceX a $843 million contract to develop and deliver the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle that will provide the capability to deorbit the International Space Station and ensure avoidance of risk to populated areas.
 
SpaceX is building a NASA craft to intentionally destroy the International Space Station after retiring
Michael Sheetz. June 26, 2024
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/26/spacex-wins-nasa-contract-for-iss-reentry-destruction.html

NASA white paper explaining why the agency believes it needs to dump the ISS into the ocean in 2030
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/iss-deorbit-analysis-summary.pdf?emrc=667c97a20241b
 

NASA will pay SpaceX nearly $1 billion to deorbit the International Space Station
Eric Berger
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/06/nasa-will-pay-spacex-nearly-1-billion-to-deorbit-the-international-space-station/
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morganism

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #26 on: June 28, 2024, 10:59:52 PM »
Orbital Mechanics & Astrodynamics

This reference material covers orbital mechanics and astrodynamics, with a focus on Mechanical or Aerospace engineering undergraduate students.

https://orbital-mechanics.space/intro.html
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #27 on: June 29, 2024, 07:36:07 PM »
If you live in the US near L.A., you might have seen this last night.
 
Quote
Jonathan McDowell @planet4589
 
Starlink precipitation report: Starlink-1149, launched in Jan 2020, was removed from the constellation on March 13 due to suspect components, and its orbit lowered. It reentered over Los Angeles at 0703 UTC Jun 29 (12.03 am PDT)
   —-
Here is the reentry groundtrack. The reentry of Starlink 1149 was widely observed in the Los Angeles area.
6/29/24, 1:14 PM ET https://x.com/planet4589/status/1807100264769356226
⬇️ pic.twitter.com/8xuOaXob9d
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #28 on: July 04, 2024, 03:57:40 AM »
NASA and SpaceX misjudged the risks from reentering space junk
Stephen Clark - 6/28/2024
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/06/maybe-its-time-to-reassess-the-risk-of-space-junk-falling-to-earth/
 
The ars comments discuss the details…
 
• “According to the European Space Agency, the annual risk of an individual human being injured by space debris is less than 1 in 100 billion.”
< With a global population of around 8-9 billion, that’s an expected injury rate of around one person a decade?
< Death by lightning is only 1 in 2 million, way better odds than winning a lotto.

• The first cargo version of the Dragon capsule jettisoned its truck after the deorbit burn, resulting in a more targeted reentry for the trunk.  But the risk that the trunk jettison might fail, remaining attached to the capsule and endangering the crew, led to the change of jettisoning it before the deorbit burn, which would give time to work out any problem while still in orbit.
 
In other words, the trunk is jettisoned earlier for mission assurance reasons, to slightly lower the [Loss of Crew] probabilities that were so important to Commercial Crew certification. NASA and SpaceX knew that unpredictable trunk reentry would be a consequence of this decision, but they overestimated the demiseability of the trunk. Or the other way to put it is that they prioritized a risk to the mission over a risk to the general public.”

• About the concern over all those Starlink satellites that will deorbit over time:
“A couple hundred Starlinks have reentered, and I have not heard of anyone finding parts. It's likely that the demisability analysis for Starlink was accurate and no significant debris reaches the surface.”

• About the “studies” of effects from rocket stages and spacecraft materials that burn up in the atmosphere:
“ …SpaceX payloads max out around 10t to LEO per launch. Per annum, that's perhaps 1000t/year (as of last year). Every year, something like 40,000t of meteorites are destroyed in Earth's atmosphere. That includes a lot of iron, carbon, aluminum, silicon, etc., and likely in similar proportions to Starlink satellites, excepting iron (more in meteorites) and heavy metals (probably more in meteorites, excepting a few like gallium, copper, and gold). At least for now, absent some evidence of harm or harmful quantities, screaming that 'the sky is falling!' seems premature.”
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morganism

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #29 on: July 06, 2024, 12:51:55 AM »
Two of the German military’s new spy satellites appear to have failed in orbit

Did OHB really not test the satellite antennas on the ground?

On the day before Christmas last year, a Falcon 9 rocket launched from California and put two spy satellites into low-Earth orbit for the armed forces of Germany, which are collectively called the Bundeswehr.

Initially, the mission appeared successful. The German satellite manufacturer, OHB, declared that the two satellites were "safely in orbit." The addition of the two SARah satellites completed a next-generation constellation of three reconnaissance satellites, the company said.

However, six months later, the two satellites have yet to become operational. According to the German publication Der Spiegel, the antennas on the satellites cannot be unfolded. Engineers with OHB have tried to resolve the issue by resetting the flight software, performing maneuvers to vibrate or shake the antennas loose, and more to no avail.

As a result, last week, German lawmakers were informed that the two new satellites will probably not go into operation as planned.
(more)

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/07/two-of-the-german-militarys-new-spy-satellites-appear-to-have-failed-in-orbit/
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #30 on: July 12, 2024, 08:31:18 PM »
A very rare SpaceX Falcon 9 failure last night caused it to deploy its 20 Starlink satellites in too low an orbit, and they will reenter the atmosphere.  However, Starlinks are designed and built to completely demise upon reentry.

SpaceX statement:
Quote
Falcon 9's second stage performed its first burn nominally. However, a liquid oxygen leak developed on the second stage.
 
After a planned relight of the upper stage engine to raise perigee - or the lowest point of orbit - the Merlin Vacuum engine experienced an anomaly and was unable to complete its second burn. Although the stage survived and still deployed the satellites, it did not successfully circularize its orbit. This left the satellites in an eccentric orbit with a very low perigee of 135 km, which is less than half the expected perigee altitude.

The team worked overnight to make contact with the satellites in order to send early burn commands, but the satellites were left in an enormously high-drag environment only 135 km above the Earth (each pass through perigee removed 5+ km of altitude from the orbit's apogee, or the highest point in the satellite orbit). At this level of drag, our maximum available thrust is unlikely to be enough to successfully raise the satellites. As such, the satellites will re-enter Earth's atmosphere and fully demise. They do not pose a threat to other satellites in orbit or to public safety.

We greatly appreciate the team's effort to learn as much as possible from the satellites and attempt recovery.


Quote
Going into Thursday's mission, the current version of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, known as the Falcon 9 Block 5, was indisputably the most reliable launch vehicle in history. Since debuting in May 2018, the Falcon 9 Block 5, which NASA has certified for astronaut flights, never had a mission failure in all of its 297 launches before the ill-fated Starlink 9-3 mission.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/07/the-unmatched-streak-of-perfection-with-spacexs-falcon-9-rocket-is-over/
 
Note: Many Starlinks have deorbited over the past few years without issue.

More here: https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,2582.msg405242.html#msg405242

 
=====

 
Ironically, This week’s initial launch of Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket suffered a similar fate, when an APU failure prevented the re-light of the second stage to finalize the orbit.  Although the second stage was passivated, there was no deorbit burn to force its reentry as planned to reduce orbital debris.  Two capsules that were to be deployed during reentry were left attached to the stage.

Quote
Andrew Parsonson
Ending off the press conference, Martin Sion confirmed that the upper stage can not be deorbited. Considering ESA's recent focus on its Zero Debris charter, this isn't a great look. Sion was also surprisingly flippant in his response to how long the stage would remain in orbit.
7/9/24, 7:06 PM    https://x.com/andrewparsonson/status/1810812852292165927
 
➡️  pic.twitter.com/ztJIarM9Vn Actual pic of the two-ton stage, before launch.
 
< So, what didn't happen is what should have happened at …
<< … 1:14:12 in that timeline, and then remainder didn't happen
7/10/24, 9:41 AM https://x.com/planet4589/status/1811033041852145881
⬇️ pic.twitter.com/pabiqs6q5X infographic below.

   —-
Quote
Eric Berger @SciGuySpace
The launch of Ariane 6 was a huge success. They'll address the upper stage issue. Given Europe's commitment to zero debris, stranding the second stage is not great. But for a debut launch of a large new vehicle, this was really promising.
   —
Yes, of course, Ariane 6 is a backward looking design. [It is not reusable, and not designed to ever be so.]  But in 2014 it wasn't entirely clear that new space was going to prevail in launch. Also the institutional firms are super powerful there. For what Europe needs right now, this will do. From now on @esa must innovate fast.
 
< Q: when will the last completely expendable medium to heavy lift rocket be developed? Or was this It?
Eric Berger
Very doubtful. Long March 10 is one, but I'm sure there will be others.
7/10/24, 2:19 PM    https://x.com/sciguyspace/status/1811102942478450786
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #31 on: July 14, 2024, 01:13:30 AM »
Falcon 9 failure / Starlink satellites deorbiting, continued

Video shows "[...] RE-ENTRY corresponding to the failed Starlink 9-3 mission over the skies of southern Chile and Argentina (Temuco, San Martín de Los Andes and San Carlos de Bariloche) ☄️🇨🇱🇦🇷
It was seen today at 10:46UTC."
 7/12/24, https://x.com/spaceintel101/status/1811829805987320106
 
➡️ pic.twitter.com/OUVGWMItzM  40 sec.
 
😢

——
SpaceX is leading a mishap investigation with involvement from the FAA after its Falcon 9 suffered a liquid oxygen leak, leading to the loss of 20 Starlink satellites on Thursday.
Spaceflight Now reporter @w_robinsonsmith spoke with Jonathan McDowell @planet4589 about the mishap and the impacts of the most flown rocket today being benched.

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket grounded after Starlink satellites lost in launch failure
14 min. Jul 13, 2024   
 
➡️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rdXkjH3AMw&feature=youtu.be


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morganism

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #32 on: July 16, 2024, 11:33:35 PM »
China Targets Near-Earth Asteroid for Upcoming Deflection Test

An upcoming Chinese mission will attempt to deflect a small asteroid in the ultimate showdown of planetary defense.

A recent paper in the Journal of Deep Space Exploration revealed new details about China’s upcoming planetary defense mission, which will also serve a dual purpose and probe the ancient space rock for clues regarding its origin.

China first announced its plans to launch an asteroid deflection mission in late 2022, targeting asteroid 2019 VL5 with a pair of spacecraft launching in 2025. According to the new paper, however, China is now targeting a different asteroid, 2015 XF261, with a launch date no earlier than 2027. The target of the mission may change as China refines its launch window.

Asteroid 2015 XF261 is around 98 feet wide (30 meters) and had a recent encounter with Earth when it zipped past our planet at a distance of 31 million miles (50 million kilometers) on Tuesday, July 9. The near-Earth asteroid routinely passes by the planet twice a year, with the next flyby on February 21, 2025.

Of the 31,000 near-Earth asteroids that have been discovered, about 2,300 are considered potentially hazardous by NASA. These are asteroids that come within 30 million miles of our planet. The chosen asteroid for the mission poses no current threat to Earth, but the test aims to display a method of deflecting a space rock should one be headed towards our planet in the future.

China’s upcoming mission will send two spacecraft to orbit the asteroid for a period between three to six months. One of the spacecraft is designated to carry out observations to study its size, shape, composition, and orbit, according to The Planetary Society. Its more violent twin, the impactor spacecraft, will slam into the asteroid in a high-speed kinetic energy impact test. The observation spacecraft will monitor the impact, as well as its aftermath for a period of six to 12 months.

If this sounds slightly familiar, that’s because NASA pulled off a similar mission not too long ago. NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission impacted a small asteroid in September 2022 to nudge it off its orbital course. The mission targeted a small moonlet Dimorphos, which was orbiting a larger space rock called Didymos and it was a success. Prior to DART’s impact, it took Dimorphos 11 hours and 55 minutes to orbit around Didymos, which decreased to 11 hours and 23 minutes after the impact. A follow-up mission will launch in October to study the aftermath of the DART mission. Unlike NASA’s mission, it’s not clear what kind of deviation the Chinese mission will cause to its target asteroid, and whether it would affect its distance from Earth.

China wants to get in on the planetary defense action, launching what is essentially those two missions combined. With the two spacecraft launching at the same time, the Chinese asteroid deflection test could potentially provide more insight into how to protect our planet from incoming threats, as well as learn more about the origins of the solar system by probing the ancient space rocks orbiting around the Sun.

https://gizmodo.com/china-asteroid-deflection-test-2000469285

....

Scientific Objectives and Configuration Payloads of Asteroid Defense Test Missions

Abstract: As for China’s first near-Earth asteroid defense on-orbit verification mission, the defensive disposal of the potential risk of near-Earth asteroid impact on the Earth was verified. The scientific objectives, scientific exploration mission were put forward, the scientific payload requirements analysis was conducted, scientific payload configuration was proposed. This study may provide a basis for decision-making for the implementation of the future asteroid defense missions .
(chinese)


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zenith

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #33 on: July 19, 2024, 02:58:09 AM »
Elon Musk's Starlink satellites could burn up the ozone layer, scientists warn
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-starlink-satellites-could-help-deplete-ozone-layer-study-2024-6

*Internet satellite networks re-entering the atmosphere en masse could damage the ozone layer, a study warns.

*Elon Musk's Starlink is by far the biggest player in this field.

*The effects could "push pause on the ozone success story in decades to come," the scientists said.

"The problem comes when the satellites fall into Earth's atmosphere to burn up, producing aluminum oxide, the scientists said, triggering a chemical reaction that's highly destructive to the ozone.

The study, published last week in the peer-reviewed Geophysical Research Letters journal, found that the presence of the oxides increased roughly eightfold between 2016 and 2022 — and could surge far more with current satellite launch plans."

------
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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #34 on: July 20, 2024, 08:08:43 AM »
Double trouble: Gaia hit by micrometeoroid and solar storm

Launched in December 2013, ESA’s Gaia spacecraft is on a mission to map the locations and motions of more than a billion stars in the Milky Way with extreme precision.

But it’s not easy being a satellite: space is a dangerous place. In recent months, hyper-velocity space dust and the strongest solar storm in 20 years have threatened Gaia’s ability to carry out the precise measurements for which it is famous.

In April, a tiny particle smaller than a grain of sand struck Gaia at high speed. Known as a micrometeoroid, millions of these particles burn up in Earth’s atmosphere every day.

But Gaia is located 1.5 million km from Earth at the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2). Out here, far from our planet’s protective atmosphere, Gaia is often struck by particles like this. Impacts are expected, and the spacecraft was designed to withstand them.

This object, however, struck Gaia at a very high speed and at just the wrong angle, damaging the spacecraft’s protective cover.

The impact created a little gap that allowed stray sunlight – around one billionth of the intensity of direct sunlight felt on Earth – to occasionally disrupt Gaia’s very sensitive sensors.

Gaia’s engineers were in the middle of dealing with this issue when they were faced with another problem.

The spacecraft’s ‘billion-pixel camera’ relies on a series of 106 charge coupled devices (CCDs) – sensors that convert light into electrical signals.

In May, the electronics controlling one of these CCDs failed – Gaia’s first CCD issue in more than 10 years in space. Each sensor has a different role, and the affected sensor was vital for Gaia’s ability to confirm the detection of stars. Without this sensor to validate its observations, Gaia began to register thousands of false detections.

The root cause for the electronics failure is not entirely clear. Gaia was designed to spend up to six years in space but has now survived almost twice as long under harsh conditions.

Around the time of failure, Gaia was hit by the same violent burst of energetic particles from the Sun that triggered spectacular auroral lightshows around the world.

The spacecraft was built to withstand radiation, but during the current period of high solar activity, it is being pushed to its limits.

It is possible that the storm was the final straw for this piece of the spacecraft’s aging hardware.

The Gaia teams at ESA’s ESOC operations centre, ESTEC technology centre and ESAC astronomy centre, together with experts from the spacecraft’s manufacturer, Airbus Defence and Space, and the payload experts of the Data Processing and Analysis Consortium, have worked together closely over the past few months to investigate, analyse and, ultimately, solve these problems.

“Gaia typically sends over 25 gigabytes of data to Earth every day, but this amount would be much, much higher if the spacecraft’s onboard software didn’t eliminate false star detections first."

"Both recent incidents disrupted this process. As a result, the spacecraft began generating a huge number of false detections that overwhelmed our systems,” explains Edmund Serpell, Gaia spacecraft operations engineer at ESOC.

“We cannot physically repair the spacecraft from 1.5 million km away. However, by carefully modifying the threshold at which Gaia’s software identifies a faint point of light as a star, we have been able to dramatically reduce the number of false detections generated by both the straylight and CCD issues.”

Thanks to the hard work and efficient collaboration of all the teams involved, Gaia was recently returned to routine operations.

In fact, the engineers took the opportunity of this unscheduled disturbance to refocus the optics of Gaia’s twin telescopes for the final time. As a result, Gaia is now producing some of the best quality data that it ever has.

https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Operations/Double_trouble_Gaia_hit_by_micrometeoroid_and_solar_storm
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #35 on: July 27, 2024, 03:30:40 AM »
—- SpaceX is moving Dragon recovery operations from Florida to California, to reduce risk of Dragon trunk debris falling on land
 
There will be a transition period, but Crew-9 should be the last to splash down off the Florida coast.  SpaceX began planning the change after Dragon trunk debris landed in Australia.  Working with NASA, they will change their reentry procedures to keep the Dragon trunk attached during the deorbit burn, so that it can be accurately targeted to land in the ocean, eliminating the risk to people on land.

SpaceX moving Crew Dragon splashdowns to West Coast after multiple space debris incidents
https://www.space.com/spacex-crew-9-iss-astronaut-space-junk-dragon

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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #36 on: July 27, 2024, 12:43:18 PM »
Quote
Kiko Dontchev
 
It is not a trivial change to move recovery from the east to west coast. Huge props to the Dragon operations, engineering and recovery team for consistently improving the safety and reliability of @SpaceX human Spaceflight program.
7/26/24, 11:34 PM https://x.com/turkeybeaver/status/1817040960049586666

SpaceX
JULY 26, 2024
DRAGON RECOVERY TO RETURN TO THE U.S. WEST COAST
Quote
SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft is designed to fly both astronauts and cargo to and from Earth’s orbit, advancing humanity’s ability to live and work in space on the road to making life multiplanetary.
 
In June 2010, Dragon became the first privately-developed spacecraft in history to launch, orbit Earth, reenter, and be recovered back on Earth. This milestone was followed by Dragon becoming the first commercial vehicle to visit the International Space Station in May 2012 under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program – an incredibly successful public-private partnership that has led to regular commercial cargo resupply missions to the space station through NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract. In 2020, NASA certified Dragon for human spaceflight after the historic launch of NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the space station.
 
Dragon’s now 45 missions to orbit have helped ensure the continued operation of the space station – delivering critical supplies, scientific research, and astronauts to the orbiting laboratory – while also creating greater opportunities for humanity to explore Earth’s orbit.
 

DRAGON DESIGN AND CURRENT RECOVERY OPERATIONS
The Dragon spacecraft is comprised of two parts: a pressurized section that safely flies crew and cargo, and an unpressurized expendable section called the trunk, which contains hardware used for spacecraft power and cooling while on-orbit. On cargo missions, the trunk can also deliver or dispose of unpressurized hardware from the International Space Station, depending on mission needs. When Dragon returns to Earth, the trunk is jettisoned prior to the spacecraft safely splashing down.
 
During Dragon’s first 21 missions, the trunk remained attached to the vehicle’s pressurized section until after the deorbit burn was completed. Shortly before the spacecraft began reentering the atmosphere, the trunk was jettisoned to ensure it safely splashed down in unpopulated areas in the Pacific Ocean.
 
After seven years of successful recovery operations on the U.S. West Coast, Dragon recovery operations moved to the East Coast in 2019, enabling teams to unpack and deliver critical cargo to NASA teams in Florida more efficiently and transport crews more quickly to Kennedy Space Center. Additionally, the proximity of the new splashdown locations to SpaceX’s Dragon processing facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida allowed SpaceX teams to recover and refurbish Dragon spacecraft at a faster rate to support a rapidly growing Dragon manifest after the completion of NASA’s Demo-2 mission in August 2020.
 
This shift required SpaceX to develop what has become our current Dragon recovery operations, first implemented during the Demo-1 and CRS-21 missions. Today, Dragon’s trunk is jettisoned prior to the vehicle’s deorbit burn while still in orbit, passively reentering and breaking up in the Earth’s atmosphere in the days to months that follow. As the trunk does not have any maneuvering capabilities of its own after separation, the location and precise timing of the trunk’s reentry cannot be predicted and is dependent upon solar activity.
 
When developing Dragon’s current reentry operations, SpaceX and NASA engineering teams used industry-standard models to understand the trunk’s breakup characteristics. These models predicted that the trunk would fully burn up due to the high temperatures created by air resistance during high-speed reentries into Earth’s atmosphere, leaving no debris. The results of these models was a determining factor in our decision to passively deorbit the trunk and enable Dragon splashdowns off the coast of Florida.
 
In 2022, however, trunk debris from NASA’s Crew-1 mission to the International Space Station was discovered in Australia, indicating the industry models were not fully accurate with regards to large, composite structures such as Dragon’s trunk. SpaceX and NASA reviewed the data and performed additional materials testing to better understand the trunk’s break-up characteristics and improve the respective modeling.
 
To date, the majority of trunk debris has reentered over unpopulated ocean areas. In the last six months, however, SpaceX became aware of three new cases where trunk debris was found on land; SpaceX is unaware of any structure damage or injuries caused by these debris.

LOOKING AHEAD
SpaceX is committed to safe spaceflight operations and public safety; it is at the core of SpaceX’s operations. After drawing new conclusions based on the data, we made two immediate changes while continuing to find a longer-term solution. First, in agreement with NASA, we paused trunk payload disposal during return operations; an empty trunk has a higher probability of fully burning up during reentry than one with payloads. Next, SpaceX implemented material changes to certain components of Dragon’s trunk to further improve the probability of it burning up during reentry.
 
Simultaneously, SpaceX engineering teams explored a wide variety of solutions to fully eliminate the risk of trunk debris landing on populated areas without increasing risk to Dragon crew or the public. Some of the options studied included a complete trunk redesign; a dedicated propulsion and guidance system to allow the trunk to deorbit itself; jettisoning the trunk at different times in the deorbit burn; and more.
 
After careful review and consideration of all potential solutions – coupled with the new knowledge about the standard industry models and that Dragon trunks do not fully burn-up during reentry – SpaceX teams concluded the most effective path forward is to return to West Coast recovery operations.
 
To accomplish this, SpaceX will implement a software change that will have Dragon execute its deorbit burn before jettisoning the trunk, similar to our first 21 Dragon recoveries. Moving trunk separation after the deorbit burn places the trunk on a known reentry trajectory, with the trunk safely splashing down uprange of the Dragon spacecraft off the coast of California. SpaceX is working with NASA, the FAA, and other federal agencies to evaluate and assess all potential return locations off the coast of California to ensure safe and reliable Dragon splashdowns on the West Coast.
 
To support these changes, a Dragon recovery vessel will move to the Pacific, where we will utilize existing SpaceX facilities in the Port of Long Beach to support initial post-flight work and operations on Dragon. Post-splashdown, crew and cargo will transit to California ahead of their final destinations, such as Houston, Texas or Cape Canaveral, Florida. Dragon refurbishment will continue to primarily take place at our Dragon processing facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to prepare the Dragon spacecraft for its next flight.
 
Continued innovation of spacecraft design and operations is critical to ensure Dragon continues to safely fly to and from Earth’s orbit. This new path will help make this possible while also keeping the public safe as we work toward becoming a spacefaring civilization.
https://www.spacex.com/updates/#dragon-recovery-to-return-to-the-us-west-coast
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #37 on: July 31, 2024, 03:58:36 PM »
Astroscale
 
📢 NEWS: Hey space debris, we're watching you from every angle! 👀
 
ADRAS-J has completed not one, but TWO fly-arounds of the upper stage, confirming the planned capture point has no major damage.
 
This milestone sets the stage for future removal and a sustainable space environment!
 
➡️ pic.twitter.com/fHR9QXKPEq   35 sec
 
#ShowtheWayADRASJ
 
7/30/24, https://x.com/astroscale_hq/status/1818159195654705503
 
< That's an H-II rocket upper stage?
Astroscale: H-IIA upper stage which launched Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) in 2009. 🚀

Astroscale’s ADRAS-J Continues to Make History: Successfully Demonstrates Fly-Around Observations of Space Debris
Quote
ADRAS-J is the world’s first attempt to safely approach, characterize and survey the state of an existing piece of large debris through Rendezvous and Proximity Operations (RPO). This groundbreaking mission has rendezvoused with an unprepared Japanese upper stage rocket body that is approximately 11 meters long, 4 meters in diameter, and weighs approximately 3 tons.

After demonstrating safe approach and proximity operations with the object that is the size of a city bus, ADRAS-J has been gathering images and other data to assess its movement and structural condition. Unprepared objects in orbit are not designed with any technologies that enable docking or potential servicing or removal, heightening the complexity of operations. The information gained from these images will provide essential data that will support a future mission to capture and remove the object. …
https://astroscale.com/astroscales-adras-j-continues-to-make-history-successfully-demonstrates-fly-around-observations-of-space-debris/
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morganism

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #38 on: August 02, 2024, 09:01:26 PM »
Ultrasmall Space Junk Can Be an Invisible Satellite Killer. Scientists Are Learning How to Track It

Imagine a world in which workers providing crucial services such as weather forecasting and global broadband Internet had to do their jobs while dodging bullets on an active shooting range. At the very least, you’d probably worry about their well-being, right?

This isn’t actually a make-believe scenario: the world we’re imagining is our own, the shooting range is Earth’s orbit, and the at-risk “workers” are satellites there (as well as crewed vehicles and habitats) threatened by skyrocketing amounts of space junk. Nearly 70 years have passed since the onset of the space age with the launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite. And in that time, the heavens above have become cluttered with thousands of spent rocket bodies, dead spacecraft and sizable pieces of hardware, all circling our planet at dangerously high speeds.

The U.S. Air Force monitors roughly 25,000 pieces of trash in low-Earth orbit (LEO), the busiest and most crowded region, which encompasses orbits of 2,000 kilometers or less in altitude. Current telescopes and radar technology limit the smallest trackable pieces to approximately 10 centimeters across, about the size of a bagel. Everything else—and there’s quite a lot of it, mostly in the form of millions of paint flecks and bits of spacecraft—is too small to be presently cataloged but can still pose extreme hazards. This so-called lethal nontrackable debris can travel around Earth at speeds of about 10 kilometers per second, or more than 22,000 miles per hour, meaning that even an otherwise-unnoticeable speck will pack a potent wallop. Indeed, in 2016, when a millimeter-sized piece of debris struck a solar panel of the European Space Agency (ESA) satellite Sentinel-1A, the impact was so strong that it punched a 40-centimeter hole in the panel and tilted the satellite askew. The risk to humans isn’t negligible either. Mere weeks ago a decommissioned Russian satellite broke into more than 100 large fragments that prompted astronauts on the International Space Station to take shelter, an incident that may have been the result of a collision with a similar uncataloged piece of debris.

“There’s a lot of them. They’re not tracked. And they’re dangerous,” says astrophysicist Jonathan C. McDowell regarding the tiny pieces of space junk. “At orbital velocities, even quite a small object is really gonna smack you.”

Without a clear way for anyone to see all that tiny debris, it’s impossible to alert satellite operators of imminent, potentially catastrophic collisions—let alone to know the true scale of the threat.

But that may soon change. The U.S. government is now trying to develop a real-time monitoring capability for the millions of ultrasmall pieces of space junk—that is, from 10 centimeters down to a millimeter in size—throughout low-Earth orbit and even beyond. Called the Space Debris Identification and Tracking (SINTRA) program, the effort involves more than 100 scientists across a dozen institutions. As a key first step, SINTRA is leveraging supercomputers and artificial intelligence algorithms trained on extensive archival data to detect the telltale signatures created by tiny, fast-moving debris. Examples include fleeting bursts of light sparked when two pieces of junk collide and faint, wavelike plasma wakes in Earth’s electrically charged upper atmosphere made by debris streaking through, both of which scientists suspect can be used to help track and study the hazardous flotsam.

To support that work, researchers at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, D.C., will soon seek to replicate some of these effects by accelerating fragments of common satellite materials such as aluminum, silicon and aerospace-grade plastic to hypervelocity speeds inside a large vacuum chamber. The results—including specific frequencies at which the lightninglike bursts occur, the amount of time they last and the rate at which clouds of dust form and expand in the aftermath of collisions—can then be used to better train the algorithms. This will ensure the team can unearth more of the myriad past collisions that were inadvertently recorded in the archives. And the eventual outcome could be a massive daily operation to track minuscule debris by the millions and create a new early-warning system for possible collisions with working satellites.

(...)

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ultrasmall-space-junk-can-be-an-invisible-satellite-killer-scientists-are/
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #39 on: August 08, 2024, 02:37:49 AM »
China’s first launch of their own Starlink-like satellites apparently did not go well.
 
Quote
Jonathan McDowell @planet4589
 
Interesting. Looks like the CZ-6A upper stage from the Chinese Starlink launch may have broken up after deploying the satellites
8/7/24, 7:21 PM https://x.com/planet4589/status/1821325868184330615
 
Quote
Slingshot Aerospace
 
Slingshot is actively tracking 50+ objects associated with a debris-generating event following China’s launch of 18 G60 satellites on August 6th for its Thousand Sails mega constellation.
We will continue to provide additional updates on this event as we analyze the data.
8/7/24, 2:13 PM
https://x.com/sling_shot_aero/status/1821248218958852146

—-
🚨 Slingshot Orbital Alert 🚨 (Post 2/2)
Quote
Following China's launch of 18 G60 satellites on August 6th, Slingshot is tracking over 50 pieces of space debris that pose a significant hazard to LEO constellations below 800 km altitude.

The images below highlight a number of key insights derived from Slingshot Global Sensor Network (SGSN) data that are being used to inform space operators of this developing event and ensure that they can keep their spacecraft safe.


𝗪𝗛𝗬 𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗦 𝗠𝗔𝗧𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗦
Tuesday’s launch of 18 G60 satellites onboard a Long March 6 rocket is the first deployment for the Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST) group’s Thousand Sails constellation – which is expected to initially consist of 1,296 satellites, with plans to expand to around 15,000 (according to Payload Space).

“If even a fraction of the launches needed to field this Chinese mega-constellation generate as much debris as this first launch, the result would be a notable addition to the space debris population in LEO,” said Audrey Schaffer, Vice President of Strategy and Policy. “Events like this highlight the importance of adherence to existing space debris mitigation guidelines to reduce the creation of new space debris and underscore the need for robust space domain awareness capabilities to rapidly detect, track, and catalog newly-launched space objects so they can be screened for potential conjunctions.”

𝗡𝗢𝗧𝗘
This isn’t the first time that a Long March 6 satellite launch has generated debris in LEO. In November 2022, a Long March 6 breakup led to hundreds of pieces of debris as reported in NASA’s Orbital Debris Quarterly News: https://lnkd.in/gQvtPjCu
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/slingshot-aerospace_slingshot-orbital-alert-post-22-activity-7227074999717703680-zE8-
[Registration required]
⬇️ graph below

China launches first satellites of constellation to rival Starlink, newspaper reports
August 5, 20241:01 PM EDT
https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/china-launches-first-satellites-constellation-rival-starlink-newspaper-reports-2024-08-05/

Quote
Jonathan McDowell @planet4589
 
Chinese TV providing better images of an individual Chinese Starlink sat than we've ever had from SpaceX of a SpaceX Starlink
:-)
8/7/24, 2:11 PM
https://x.com/planet4589/status/1821247892923019629
⬇️ pic.x.com/gpxph9e1bh 2 pics of the satellites.
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #40 on: August 08, 2024, 09:40:45 PM »
US Spacecom now tracking over 300 pieces from this breakup event.
8/8/24, 2:52 PM https://x.com/aj_fi/status/1821620616060895296
 
Quote
USSPACECOM can confirm the break-up of a Chinese Long March 6A rocket launched on Aug. 6, 2024, resulting in over 300 pieces of trackable debris in low-Earth orbit.
 
USSPACECOM has observed no immediate threats and continues to conduct routine conjunction assessments to support the safety and sustainability of the space domain.

Chinese megaconstellation launch creates field of space debris
Andrew Jones  August 8, 2024
Space debris at altitudes such as this roughly 800-kilometer polar orbit, where there is very little atmospheric drag, can remain in orbit for decades or longer, depending on the size and density of the debris and other variables.
https://spacenews.com/chinese-megaconstellation-launch-creates-field-of-space-debris/

 
Andrew Jones @AJ_FI
Payload fairing from the Aug. 6 launch of a Long March 6A carrying the first 18 G60/Thousand Sails satellites. …
8/8/24, 3:09 AM https://x.com/aj_fi/status/1821443632613757227
 
⬇️  Photo below.
 
头条 @ 疾风知劲草
Headline @ The strong wind knows the strong grass
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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #41 on: August 12, 2024, 12:18:22 AM »
Chinese Rocket's Breakup Puts Over 1,000 Satellites and Other Objects at Risk
https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/chinese-rockets-breakup-puts-over-1000-satellites-other-objects-risk-2024-08-09/

WASHINGTON, Aug 9 (Reuters) - A Chinese rocket stage that broke apart in space this week created more than 700 pieces of debris, putting over 1,000 satellites and other objects in a high-traffic region of Earth's orbit at risk of hazardous collisions, analysts said on Friday.

China's state-owned Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST) launched 18 internet satellites into orbit on Tuesday as the inaugural batch of a communications network that will challenge SpaceX's vast Starlink constellation.

The upper rocket stage that carried those satellites into orbit appeared to explode soon after deploying its payloads, creating a growing field of debris that U.S. space-tracking firms estimate to be at least 700 pieces so far.

U.S. space-tracking firm LeoLabs said it was likely the number of debris pieces exceeds 900, making the event one of the largest ever. The debris cloud, created at roughly 800 kilometres (497 miles) in altitude, will last several years, several analysts said.


https://x.com/LeoLabs_Space/status/1821674976245670386

Over 1,100 satellites and other objects in space are at risk of colliding with the Chinese debris, Audrey Schaffer, vice president of strategy at space-tracking firm Slingshot Aerospace, told Reuters.

"What we are seeing now is there are over 1,100 predicted conjunctions of less than 5-km miss distances over the next three days," Schaffer said, adding that roughly a third of those objects at risk are active spacecraft that can likely maneuver out of the way.

The rest of the objects, Schaffer said, are uncontrollable pieces of existing space junk that have no way of dodging the new debris, raising fears among many analysts of cascading collisions.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

This would rank in the top five of all debris-generation events since the dawn of the Space Age.

https://planet4589.org/space/debris/debriscat/debris.html

As the objects drift lower, their orbits will cross paths with SpaceX's Starlink Internet satellites, the International Space Station and other crew spacecraft, and thousands more pieces of orbital debris, putting commercial and government satellites at risk of collision.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/us-military-tracks-more-than-300-pieces-of-debris-from-chinese-launch/
https://spacenews.com/chinese-rocket-stage-breaks-up-into-cloud-of-more-than-700-pieces-of-space-debris/

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« Last Edit: August 12, 2024, 12:33:52 AM by vox_mundi »
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #42 on: August 31, 2024, 03:52:46 AM »
A meteor, so large it caused a sonic boom, lit up the sky over the mountains of the southeastern US last night.

Whoa! Check out this meteor spotted over Blue Ridge mountains
Quote
… This particular meteor appears to be unique, according to WCNC Weather Impact Chief Meteorologist Brad Panovich.

"How long it was visible, how slow it was, and the sonic boom... This usually means a larger size meteor," Panovich explained. "Most meteors that are fast and faint are the size of a grain of sand. This was likely much, much larger."

This shallow approach angle means the meteor traveled lower and into more of Earth's atmosphere than a typical meteor, according to Panovich.

"It was visible longer due to the size and not completely burning up, which, along with the sonic boom, means fragments could have made it to the surface of the Earth," he said.

If that's the case, tiny pieces of the meteor may have reached Earth's surface, Panovich believes. If so, they would be the size of small pebbles and detectable with a metal detector.

Any piece of a meteor that survives the atmosphere and reaches the Earth's surface would be called a meteorite.
https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/meteor-fireball-explosion-north-carolina-
 
Videos and more at the link.

« Last Edit: August 31, 2024, 03:58:06 AM by Sigmetnow »
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #43 on: August 31, 2024, 07:09:33 PM »
A meteor, so large it caused a sonic boom, lit up the sky over the mountains of the southeastern US last night.

Careful what you wish for? 

“Giant Meteor” was a popular choice in US presidential polls (and bumper stickers and yard signs) in 2016.  The 2024 election is on November 5th.
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #44 on: September 04, 2024, 04:16:49 PM »
NASA
⁦‪ 
NASA and ⁦‪@esa‬⁩’s near-Earth object study teams predict that a very small (~1 meter) #asteroid will harmlessly impact Earth’s atmosphere in a few hours at ~12:40pm EDT (~16:40 UTC) and create a fireball off the east coast of the northern Philippines.
 
9/4/24, 10:14 AM ET https://x.com/nasa/status/1831334973011268079
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #45 on: September 04, 2024, 11:23:45 PM »
Raymon Dullana
SUCH A SPECTACULAR NIGHT SHOW, ASTEROID RW1!!! Taken from Tuguegarao City, Cagayan, Philippines! 😍😍😍
9/4/24, 12:51 PM ET ➡️ https://x.com/raymongdullana/status/1831374506851758406
12 sec. at the link.


EDIT:
 
Dr Robin George Andrews 🌋☄️
@SquigglyVolcano
☄️💥Woah! Newly discovered 1-1.5m asteroid 2024 RW1 (spotted by near-Earth asteroid hunters in the US) burns up above the Philippines just hours after it was first seen.
 
This asteroid wasn’t a risk. But if it was, a duck-and-cover warning was possible.
 
9/4/24, 1:28 PM ➡️  https://x.com/squigglyvolcano/status/1831383862435578335
                       10 sec.

European Space Agency:
… Discovered this morning by the Catalina Sky Survey, this is just the ninth asteroid that humankind has ever spotted before impact.
9/4/24, 5:57 AM https://x.com/esa/status/1831270255454191893

Jonathan McDowell: … Do look up!
9/4/24, 9:54 AM https://x.com/planet4589/status/1831330084893929726

« Last Edit: September 05, 2024, 01:18:19 AM by Sigmetnow »
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #46 on: September 05, 2024, 01:17:53 AM »
Aboard the ISS…

Matthew Dominick
 
I showed this to a couple of friends yesterday to see what they thought. They both thought it was a meteor exploding in the atmosphere - a rather bright one called a bolide. Timelapse is slowed down to one frame per second for you to see it streaking and then exploding. 

If you know about these type of meteors please chime in. I am curious to know more.

I will post the longer timelapse over the Nile river later. 

Timelapse was setup over Northern Africa where it was very dark with lightning. I got greedy with ISO (25600) and when the timelapse got to Cairo the cities were overexposed. I was greedy because I wanted the Milky Way Core.  When I went to review the shots afterwards I found the bolide.

1/2s exposure, ISO 25600, 15mm, T1.8, 1/2s intervalometer, 1 fps for the timelapse playback 
9/3/24, 7:14 PM ➡️  https://x.com/dominickmatthew/status/1831108500518240344
21 sec.
 
   —-
Here is a longer and faster frame rate version of the timelapse. I think it is interesting to compare the size of the bolide blast to other objects in view like the mediterranean, Cairo, or lightning strikes.
 
9/3/24, 7:26 PM ➡️  https://x.com/dominickmatthew/status/1831111577803661750
20 sec
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #47 on: September 06, 2024, 09:20:21 PM »
Slingshot Aerospace
🚨Slingshot Orbital Alert 🚨
 
Slingshot Aerospace has detected what appears to be a breakup of the ATLAS 5 CENTAUR Rocket Body in a highly elliptical orbit (HEO). This rocket delivered GOES 17 into orbit on March 1st, 2018.
   —
NORAD ID: 43227
Time of Fragmentation Event: ~5:21 UTC on Sep. 6th, 2024
Time of First Observation: 5:32 UTC on September 6th, 2024
Orbital Info: 34,953 km apogee; 7,634 km perigee; 9.4° inclination
 
We will continue to monitor and provide additional updates on this event.
9/6/24, 10:59 AM https://x.com/sling_shot_aero/status/1832071044221600129
 
< Just A. Tinker @John_Gardi
This stage passes through the gauntlet of LEO debris on every orbit so it was roll the dice as to whether it deorbited or got hit first.
The stage was safed and depressurized so whatever hit it must've been pretty big.
9/6/24, https://x.com/john_gardi/status/1832078098252320926
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #48 on: September 16, 2024, 07:34:52 PM »
More on the Atlas 5 Centaur upper stage breakup (Reply #47):
 
Quote
< What’s all that stuff flying by on the diagonal?
Jonathan McDowell
@planet4589
Those are likely background stars, moving relative to the camera frame which is tracking with the motion of the satellite
9/7/24, https://x.com/planet4589/status/1832436651894952349
   —-
Another high-orbit Centaur, AV-077, has undergone a breakup. ULA is pretty good at passivating things so I wonder if this is another clue that the impact rate (and so debris number density) in geotransfer orbit is higher than we might have thought
 
< Tory Bruno
All Centaurs have been thoroughly passivated after placement in the designated junkyard or reentry orbit. This means all propellants and gas bottles vented and batteries drained, thus removing stored energy, rendering them inert. They are incapable of coming apart on their own.
 
Jonathan McDowell
That's what I was saying. Hence debris impacts are my prime suspect. (Although: are the tanks of the passivated Centaurs depressurized? What does that do to their structural strength?)
9/7/24, 11:10 AM
https://x.com/planet4589/status/1832436351607931012
   —-
Jonathan McDowell
AV-073 broke up in 2019; AV-049 in 2018; AV-018 in 2019; and now AV-077. All from unknown causes as far as I am aware.
9/7/24, 10:15 AM
https://x.com/planet4589/status/1832422436165591041
 
< Just A. Tinker @John_Gardi
Maybe it's those previously broken up stages that are seeding these highly elliptical orbits with debris.
 
  —-
Quote
🚨 Slingshot Orbital Alert 🚨 (Post 2/2)
 
The Slingshot Global Sensor Network is currently tracking 40+ objects related to the breakup of an ATLAS 5 CENTAUR Rocket Body (NORAD ID: 43227) at ~05:21 UTC this morning (September 6th, 2024). pic.x.com/i5wfhrsuqi
   —
Following a detailed conjunction assessment – and given the highly elliptical orbit (34,953 km apogee; 7,634 km perigee; 9.4° inclination) – Slingshot has determined that the current debris cloud does not likely pose an immediate threat to any active spacecraft at present.
   —
Currently, the closest predicted approach between debris from the ATLAS 5 CENTAUR parent object and known debris is estimated at ~220 km.
  …
9/6/24, https://x.com/sling_shot_aero/status/1832181867262701793

 
=====
 
Jonathan McDowell
@planet4589
The trunk from Polaris Dawn was jettisoned into a 215 x 451 km x 51.7 deg orbit and has been cataloged as 61073. It will make an uncontrolled reentry in a couple of months.
   —-
I do NOT think it will completely burn up. There is convincing evidence that significant chunks of the Dragon trunk survive reentry almost every time. (See: New South Wales, Saskatchewan, Colorado, N. Carolina...)
 
< Isn’t that why SpaceX is moving their Dragon recovery ops to the West coast?
 
Jonathan McDowell
Exactly. Crew-8 will also be an uncontrolled trunk reentry though. Then they move to the west coast.
9/15/24, https://x.com/planet4589/status/1835378221355037001
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morganism

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Re: Orbital Debris / Warnings
« Reply #49 on: September 16, 2024, 10:14:51 PM »
Particles that damage satellites can be flushed out of orbit with very long radio waves.

(paywalled?)

https://www.livemint.com/science/particles-that-damage-satellites-can-be-flushed-out-of-orbit-11726478541577.html

(this could be useful for the oxidation probs from starlink satts too)


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