Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
On November 27, after a year and eight months flying through the inner Solar System, Solar Orbiter [swung] by home to ‘drop off’ some extra energy. This will line the spacecraft up for its next six flybys of Venus. These final gravity assists will hone and tilt Solar Orbiter’s orbit, enabling the heat-protected probe to capture the first-ever direct images of our star’s poles, and much more.
During the upcoming flyby, Solar Orbiter is estimated to pass just 460 km from Earth’s surface at its closest approach – about 30 kilometers above the path of the International Space Station. It will travel twice through the Geostationary ring at 36 000 kilometers from Earth’s surface and even through low-Earth orbit, below 2000 kilometers – two regions littered with space junk. [(Graphic by ESA)]
Before we worry too much, let’s start by pointing out that the chance of Solar Orbiter being struck by debris is very, very, very small. Earth observation missions spend their entire life in low-Earth orbit – the most debris-filled region of space, and while they perform ‘collision avoidance maneuvers’ a few times per year, Solar Orbiter will spend only a few minutes here as it heads towards closest approach and then leaves again, onward to Venus.
ESA astronaut Tim Peake took this photo [15.4 kB] from inside Cupola on the International Space Station, showing a 7 mm-diameter circular chip gouged out by the impact from a tiny piece of space debris, possibly a paint flake or small metal fragment no bigger than a few thousandths of a millimeter across. The background just shows the inky blackness of space. Credit: ESA/NASA
However small the risk, collisions with debris at low-Earth altitudes do happen. In 2016, a solar panel on ESA’s Sentinel-1A spacecraft was struck by a particle thought to be less than five millimeters in size. Despite its size, its high relative speed meant it still damaged an area 40-cm across, leading to a small reduction in onboard power and slight changes to the orientation and orbit of the satellite. Hundreds of millions of debris particles this size are currently in orbit.
[...] After decades of launches, with little thought of what would be done with satellites at the end of their lives, our space environment has become littered with space debris. While Solar Orbiter zips by, passing just momentarily through Earth’s orbital highways, it’s an important reminder that the space debris problem is unique to Earth, of our own making, and ours to clean up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2021, @08:51PM (3 children)
Just wait until one of them takes this thing out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2021, @09:04PM
It wasn't wearing a mask when it flew by Earth so it caught the Omicron variant and will soon explode.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday November 29 2021, @11:07PM (1 child)
Space is big, really big!
As mentioned in the article:
So, hundreds of millions of pea sized particles in orbit, and we have very few collisions with debris. Even of the pea sized variety. Complaining about a few thousand or even several thousand Starlink Satellites seems to be a bit nutty when at least you can track Starlink Satellites. Hundreds of Millions of pea sized debris particles whipping around the Earth like so much scattershot / grapeshot, seems like a much more likely thing to take out sensitive science equipment.
Again, Space is Big! Even the finite space that is Low Earth Orbit.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 30 2021, @12:20PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves