[ad_1]
Yunhai 1-02’s damage is not self-inflicted.
In March, the 18th US Space Force Space Control Squadron (18SPCS) reported breaking Yunhai 1-02, a Chinese military satellite launched in September 2019. It was not known at the time whether the spacecraft suffered some kind of failure – an explosion in its propulsion system, perhaps – or whether it had collided with something in orbit.
We now know that the latter explanation is correct, thanks to the detectives of astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell, based at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Related: The worst space debris events of all time
On Saturday (August 14), McDowell spotted an update in the Space-Track.org catalog, which 18SPCS is making available to registered users. The update included “a note for object 48078, 1996-051Q:“ Collided with a satellite. ”This is a new type of comment entry – I’ve never seen such a comment for other satellites previously “, McDowell tweeted on Saturday.
He dived into the tracking data to find out more. McDowell discovered that Object 48078 was a small piece of space debris – probably a piece of debris between 10 and 50 centimeters wide – from the Zenit-2 rocket that launched the Russian Tselina-2 spy satellite in September 1996. Eight pieces of debris from this rocket have been tracked over the years, he said, but object 48078 has only one set of orbital data, which was collected in March of this year.
“I conclude that they probably only spotted it in the data after it collided with something, and that’s why there is only one set of orbital data. The collision. So probably happened shortly after the time of orbit. What did it affect? ” McDowell wrote in another tweet from Saturday.
Yunhai 1-02, who broke up on March 18, was “the obvious candidate,” he added – and the data showed that it was indeed the victim. Yunhai 1-02 and Object 48078 passed within 0.6 mile (1 kilometer) of each other – within tracking system error range – at 3:41 a.m. EDT (0741 GMT) March 18, “exactly when 18SPCS reports that Yunhai broke up,” McDowell wrote in another tweet.
Thirty-seven debris objects generated by the smashup have been detected to date, and there are likely more that remain untracked, he added.
Despite the damage, Yunhai 1-02 apparently survived the violent encounter, which occurred at an altitude of 485 miles (780 kilometers). Amateur radio trackers continued to pick up signals from the satellite, McDowell said, although it’s not clear if Yunhai 1-02 can still do the job it was designed to do (whatever it is).
Space waste cleaning: 7 wild ways to destroy orbital debris
McDowell described the incident as the first confirmed major orbital collision since February 2009, when the late Russian military spacecraft Kosmos-2251 crashed into Iridium 33, an operational communications satellite. This smashup generated a huge 1800 pieces of traceable debris before the following October.
However, we may be entering an era of increasingly frequent space collisions – especially collisions like the Yunhai incident, in which a relatively small piece of debris injures but does not kill a satellite. Humanity continues to launch more and more spaceships, after all, at an ever increasing rate.
“Collisions are proportional to the square of the number of things in orbit,” McDowell told Space.com. “That is, if you have 10 times as many satellites, you are going to have 100 times as many collisions. So as the traffic density increases, the collisions will go from being a minor component to space debris. . problem of being the main constituent. It’s just math. “
We could reach that point in just a few years, he added.
The nightmarish scenario that satellite operators and exploration advocates want to avoid is Kessler Syndrome – a series of cascading collisions that could clutter Earth’s orbit with so much debris that our use and crossing of the Last Frontier are considerably hampered.
Our current space waste problem isn’t that big, but the Yunhai event could be a harbinger of sorts. It’s possible, McDowell said, that object 48078 was knocked down from the Zenit-2 rocket in a collision, so the March smashup could be part of a stunt.
“This is very disturbing and this is one more reason why you want to remove these large objects from orbit, ”McDowell told Space.com. “They can generate this other debris that is smaller. ”
Small debris is difficult to follow, and there is already a lot of it up there. About 900,000 objects between 0.4 inches and 4 inches wide (1 to 10 cm) hiss around our planet, the European Space Agency estimates. And Earth’s orbit is home to 128 million debris 0.04 to 0.4 inches (1 mm to 1 cm) in diameter, according to ESA.
Objects in orbit are moving so fast – around 17,150 mph (27,600 km / h) at the altitude of the International space station, for example – that even tiny fragments of debris can cause serious damage to a satellite.
Mike Wall is the author of “The low“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book on the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
[ad_2]
Source link