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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday January 26 2017, @10:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the caution-space-debris dept.

A European Space Agency satellite risks colliding with a piece of space debris about 15 centimeters (a half-foot) long this week, forcing ESA's flight control to plan a rare evasive maneuver.

A piece of an old Russian satellite called Cosmos-375 is forecast to miss Swarm-B, one of ESA's three Swarm satellites that measure Earth's magnetic fields, by just over the length of a football field. But the margin of error for that forecast is around 1,000 meters (3,280 feet or more like three football fields).

ESA has been working with data from the US armed forces' Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC), located at Vandenberg Air Force base in California, to plan a collision avoidance maneuver that would be uploaded to the satellite Wednesday.

If the satellite is able to alter its orbit as planned, the piece of junk should pass 746 meters (2,448 feet) in front of Swarm-B and 56 meters (184 feet) below it.

Pretty interesting that they are able to track a 15cm piece of debris.

Source:
https://www.cnet.com/news/european-space-agency-orbiter-russian-satellite-space-junk-this-week/

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  • (Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Thursday January 26 2017, @12:37PM

    by WizardFusion (498) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 26 2017, @12:37PM (#458881) Journal

    A giant magnet would be better, have swing around the planet a few time picking up all the junk, then fly it into the sun.

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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday January 26 2017, @01:39PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday January 26 2017, @01:39PM (#458905) Journal

    I think deorbiting a bunch of space junk and having it evaporate in Earth's atmosphere is going to be a lot less costly than getting it out of Earth's gravity well and into the Sun. I like the ballistics gel/foam idea.

    If EmDrive were to work, you could have a solar-powered satellite deorbiting space junk with lasers... forever, since it would not need to be refueled to maintain its own orbit.

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    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday January 26 2017, @06:42PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Thursday January 26 2017, @06:42PM (#459042)

      Let's build a space elevator and put a Hollywood movie star in it.
      If that doesn't attract all the random space junk, I don't know what will.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Pslytely Psycho on Thursday January 26 2017, @02:25PM

    by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Thursday January 26 2017, @02:25PM (#458922)

    I would think a giant magnet would be worthless. Most of the materials in a satellite are non-magnetic. Aluminum, glass, plastics, titanium. Plus flying it into the sun is a huge amount of fuel. For a fraction of that fuel you could de-orbit and hopefully burn up in the atmosphere.

    The blob idea may have some merit, but I don't think it would be enough to de-orbit stuff as it would be passive, unless it was already in a sub-orbital trajectory and intercepted the item. Of course then it would have to be dense enough to capture and hold. That means a fair amount of dead weight to carry into orbit.

    Maybe a giant retractable net to actually catch things? The main problem would be size and porosity. It has to be small enough a net to catch and hold small items, strong enough for larger items be of large enough diameter to keep orbit changes to grab more items to a minimum or you get the fuel problem. And then you have to de-orbit either the net or the entire thing. The more capable the more fuel. Working in LEO is difficult and the rocket equation is a heartless bitch.

    Just pondering with limited knowledge.....

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    • (Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday January 26 2017, @04:59PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 26 2017, @04:59PM (#459000) Journal

      Deorbiting is the key. Hopefully burning up in the atmosphere. If not, most homeowners policies cover damage from falling space junk. (According to TV news broadcast when the skylab was coming down in 1979.) The odds of hitting anyone are extremely slim. Again, for skylab, the odds of it hitting SOMEONE was stated as 150 to 1. The odds of it hitting YOU PERSONALLY which, I don't remember, but were extremely small.

      As for a net or squishy blob, I wonder if this could even work. The capture device is also free floating. It must also have an orbit, which means a high velocity if it is to stay up for any length of time. It's perigee must not be so low as to de-orbit itself. If you deliberately put it into an orbit that will intersect with a desired object, the collision speed may not be high enough. Polar orbit satellite with a non polar orbit satellite might have more interesting collision speeds.

      In any event the new velocity vector will be determined by combining the velocities of the satellite to de orbit and the net to catch it. Think two billard balls colliding, and neither one of them is "standing still" of that term even has any meaning. Capt Picard: full stop! Ensign: relative to what sir? Also the two billiard balls may have wildly different masses like a satellite and a net to "catch" it. If there is a successful catch, then the new combined object has the mass of both original objects, and a new velocity vector (speed + direction) determined by the two original masses.

      An alternate outcome if the impact speed is too high is that you don't catch it but the collision results in one or both objects breaking up. These smaller objects all have their own orbits. Some of those orbits may have a a perigee that causes them to de orbit sooner.

      This breakup into smaller pieces is usually what happens when two satellites collide with a high closing speed. Many of the pieces may not de orbit but may remain in orbits, but in an expanding debris cloud that now endanger more satellites.

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      • (Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Saturday January 28 2017, @11:40AM

        by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Saturday January 28 2017, @11:40AM (#459864)

        The idea of a net I got here some time ago:
        http://www.space.com/29070-space-junk-fishing-net-video.html [space.com]
        The test was with a hand fired net in the vomit comet.

        The Japanese were also working with something like this, but I'm not finding much on how successful the net was, they seem to be currently working toward a tether that attaches to the debris, then creates an electrical charge via the magnetosphere theoretically slowing the object into re-entry. As there hasn't been a lot of follow up, I assume it wasn't very practical, and the tether idea seems like it would take a very long time to de-orbit, perhaps years.

        https://phys.org/news/2014-01-japan-scientists-tether-space-junk.html [phys.org]

        I've also seen ideas like zapping stuff with LASERs and using puffs of inert gas as well.

        It seems as though no one has of yet come up with a truly practical solution. With over 100 million pieces of space junk, it's going to be expensive no matter what.

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        Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
  • (Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday January 26 2017, @09:44PM

    by nitehawk214 (1304) on Thursday January 26 2017, @09:44PM (#459158)

    Everything you just said is wrong.

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