working fine for me now. may have been an issue at my end - I currently have two systems running over three screens controlled by one keyboard and mouse - so I may have been on any combination when I had the issue- the one system was reinstalled yesterday and has very little on it as yet.
I also have a couple of VPNs here so could have been accessing the site from anywhere
‘Irresponsible’: Nasa chides China as rocket debris lands in Indian OceanState media reported that parts of the rocket had re-entered the atmosphere at 10.24am Beijing time (0224 GMT) and landed at a location with the coordinates of longitude 72.47 degrees east and latitude 2.65 degrees north.
I entered 2.65, 72.47 into Google Maps and got this.
Here is a zoomed in view to see how close the coordinates are to some of the islands. Of course this is all speculation because the coordinates given might not be very accurate. We might have to wait for better coordinates or news reports from people living in the area report regarding the event.
Then again there are probably some ships from the Chinese military going to the area to see if there is any debris to be found. Ships from other countries might come to but I expect the Chinese to "persuade" them to leave. In any event it is possible that even if anything is found nobody outside the Chinese military may ever know about it.
The major problem with returning Space "junk" is that it is unlikely to hit as a single piece, (which could be a big single point of damage), but is more likely to break up, so producing a shower of shrapnel, (Think of more of a shotgun than a bullet)
For people on the ground small pieces are of little concern because they are more likely to burn up before hitting the ground. People on the ground have to worry more about the larger pieces that survive reentry. Even then the probably of any person let alone a populated area has an extremely small chance of being harmed by even these.
Any debris even as small as one millimeter does pose a danger to orbiting spacecraft and especially an astronaut in a spacesuit because of the momentum these objects have.
ORBITAL DEBRIS: A Technical Assessment, page 94Astronauts or cosmonauts engaging in extra-vehicular activities are particularly vulnerable to the impact of small debris. On average, debris 1 mm in diameter is capable of perforating current U.S. space suits.
4 HAZARDS TO SPACE OPERATIONS FROM DEBRIS | Orbital Debris: A Technical Assessment | The National Academies Press
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Space Command knows exactly where the Chinese rocket came down but is not giving out any specific information. There has been some criticism of the Chinese for not saying where it would come down. No country not even the United States can predict very accurately very far in advance. Probably nobody knew for sure until the last orbit or two.
Some satellites have enough maneuvering capability to force a deorbit when it is wanted. Most space objects do not. Large objects like the ISS will have to come down at some point. That will probably be by the end of this decade. The ISS can't do this on its own. Plans will have to be made to dock some space craft with it with enough fuel on board to perform the necessary rocket burns to bring the ISS down in an ocean far from any inhabited areas. I expect that to be the Pacific Ocean.
The International Space Station can't last forever. Here's how it will eventually die by fire. | Space
How Will the International Space Station Fall to Earth? | Space
The biggest unknowns are objects with no maneuvering capabilities like rocket stages and malfunctioning satellites. They will just come down wherever orbital dynamics and atmospheric drag dictates. Other factors include tidal effects and solar activity. Atmospheric drag at any particular altitude is not constant. All together this drag can in total be not known well enough in advance to predict exactly where and when one of these errant space objects will come down.
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Space junk in numbers
- 2,000 active satellites in Earth's orbit
- 3,000 dead satellites in Earth's orbit
- 34,000 pieces of space junk larger than 10 centimetres
- 128 million pieces of space junk larger than 1 millimetre
- One in 10,000: risk of collision that will require debris avoidance manoeuvres
- 25 debris avoidance manoeuvres by the ISS since 1999
What is space junk and why is it a problem? | Natural History Museum
Last edited by MisterEd; 09 May 2021 at 09:24.
Osiris-Rex on its way home.
NASA spacecraft begins 2-year trip home with asteroid rubble | CP24.com
Some mentions of new launches late this year.
the ISS has had to be moved on any number of occasions due debris coming close. (sorry, I see its already been mentioned).
Even at the altitude of the ISS there is some atmospheric drag. The ISS has to do a reboost about once a month on average. It has two ways to do this:
- Docked spacecraft using their onboard thrusters
- ISS's own thrusters (fuel must be replenished by visiting spacecraft)
Back in the 1980's I worked in a support role for the propulsion lab at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. The ISS was in the design stage at this time. The Space Shuttle's fuel cells produce excess water which must be dumped into space. Some of the engineers had proposed to offload some of this excess water to the ISS. Electrical energy on the ISS would be used for electrolysis to split the water into Hydrogen and Oxygen. This would be the fuel and oxidizer for reboost engines onboard the ISS. This was a novel idea but politics got in the way causing the idea to be dropped.
As long as on the close pass Anubis doesn't inhabit one of the Cosmonauts and try to get to the Stargate...
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