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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday April 20 2017, @04:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-a-piece-of-junk! dept.

Scientists sounded the alarm Tuesday over the problems posed to space missions from orbital junk—the accumulating debris from mankind's six-decade exploration of the cosmos.

In less than a quarter of a century, the number of orbiting fragments large enough to destroy a spacecraft has more than doubled, a conference in Germany heard.

And the estimated tally of tiny objects—which can harm or degrade spacecraft in the event of a collision, and are hard to track—is now around 150 million.

"We are very much concerned," said Rolf Densing, director of operations at the European Space Agency (ESA), pleading for a worldwide effort to tackle the mess.

"This problem can only be solved globally."

Travelling at up to 28,000 kilometres (17,500 miles) per hour, even a minute object impacts with enough energy to damage the surface of a satellite or manned spacecraft.

If you always wondered why the Death Star had a trash compactor, here's your answer.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @04:58AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @04:58AM (#496696)

    Some things in that article really surprised me, like the ISS apparently having to "often" thrust to avoid collisions. In getting things to space we take advantage of Earth's rotational velocity which means most stuff up there is going to be flying in the same direction minimizing relative velocities. In fact their relative velocities would be 0 thanks to the way orbits work. Your orbital altitude above Earth is interestingly enough decided by, and only by, your orbital velocity. If you're going to 10 units of speed you might be at 1 unit of altitude above earth and everything else at that altitude would also be going exactly 10 units of speed. Is the concern about things on an equatorial orbit getting t-boned by things on a polar orbit? Or is it that those collisions and explosions mentioned have created some microparticles traveling in opposite the normal orbits? I've seen this fear of debris mentioned multiple times, but details are rarely provided.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @05:50AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @05:50AM (#496708)

    Orbital mechanics do not work the way you think they work. A tiny difference in inclination or eccentricity can result in objects traveling at hundreds or thousands of m/s relative to each other at the point of intersection.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by julian on Thursday April 20 2017, @05:53AM

    by julian (6003) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 20 2017, @05:53AM (#496710)

    You're forgetting that most orbits are an ellipse, not perfectly round. Actually, all are ellipses, a circle is just a special case of one. Their eccentricity (e) is usually greater than 0. Also, we often launch satellites into inclined orbits, or even polar orbits. Debris (fairings, Yo-yo de-spin counterweights) are pushed away or left behind so they have a slightly different orbit.

    All this gives plenty of opportunities for collisions at dangerous relative velocities, although head-on collisions are probably one of the rarer types for the reason you suggested.