m***a
发帖数: 13878 | 1 https://www.space.com/space-junk-collision-chinese-satellite-yunhai-1-02
Space collision: Chinese satellite got whacked by hunk of Russian rocket in
March
By Mike Wall 6 days ago
We may see more and more of these orbital smashups in the coming years.
An artist's concept depicting the near-Earth orbital debris field, based on
real data from the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office.
An artist's concept depicting the near-Earth orbital debris field, based on
real data from the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office. (Image credit: NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center)
Yunhai 1-02's wounds are not self-inflicted.
In March, the U.S. Space Force's 18th Space Control Squadron (18SPCS)
reported the breakup of Yunhai 1-02, a Chinese military satellite that
launched in September 2019. It was unclear at the time whether the
spacecraft had suffered some sort of failure — an explosion in its
propulsion system, perhaps — or if it had collided with something in orbit.
We now know that the latter explanation is correct, thanks to some sleuthing
by astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell, who's based at
the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
On Saturday (Aug. 14), McDowell spotted an update in the Space-Track.org
catalog, which the 18SPCS makes available to registered users. The update
included "a note for object 48078, 1996-051Q: 'Collided with satellite.'
This is a new kind of comment entry — haven't seen such a comment for any
other satellites before," McDowell tweeted on Saturday.
He dove into the tracking data to learn more. McDowell found that Object
48078 is a small piece of space junk — likely a piece of debris between 4
inches and 20 inches wide (10 to 50 centimeters) — from the Zenit-2 rocket
that launched Russia's Tselina-2 spy satellite in September 1996. Eight
pieces of debris originating from that rocket have been tracked over the
years, he said, but Object 48078 has just a single 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's only one set of orbital data. So the
collision probably happened shortly after the epoch of the orbit. What did
it hit?" McDowell wrote in another Saturday tweet.
Yunhai 1-02, which 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 miles (1 kilometer) of each other — within
the margin of error of the tracking system — at 3:41 a.m. EDT (0741 GMT) on
March 18, "exactly when 18SPCS reports Yunhai broke up," McDowell wrote in
another tweet.
Thirty-seven debris objects spawned by the smashup have been detected to
date, and there are likely others 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 have continued to detect signals from the satellite, McDowell said,
though it's unclear if Yunhai 1-02 can still do the job it was built to
perform (whatever that may be).
Space Junk Clean Up: 7 Wild Ways to Destroy Orbital Debris
Click here for more Space.com videos...
McDowell described the incident as the first major confirmed orbital
collision since February 2009, when the defunct Russian military spacecraft
Kosmos-2251 slammed into Iridium 33, an operational communications satellite
. That smashup generated a whopping 1,800 pieces of trackable debris by the
following October.
However, we may be entering an era of increasingly frequent space collisions
— especially smashups like the Yunhai incident, in which a relatively
small piece of debris wounds but doesn't kill a satellite. Humanity keeps
launching more and more spacecraft, after all, at an ever-increasing pace.
"Collisions are proportional to the square of the number of things in orbit,
" McDowell told Space.com. "That is to say, if you have 10 times as many
satellites, you're going to get 100 times as many collisions. So, as the
traffic density goes up, collisions are going to go from being a minor
constituent of the space junk problem to being the major constituent. That's
just math."
We may reach that point in just a few years, he added.
The nightmare scenario that satellite operators and exploration advocates
want to avoid is the Kessler syndrome — a cascading series of collisions
that could clutter Earth orbit with so much debris that our use of, and
travel through, the final frontier is significantly hampered.
Related stories
— Who's going to fix the space junk problem?
— Space junk removal is not going smoothly
— The world needs space junk standards, G7 nations agree
Our current space junk problem is not that severe, but the Yunhai event
could be a warning sign of sorts. It's possible, McDowell said, that Object
48078 was knocked off the Zenit-2 rocket by a collision, so the March
smashup may be part of a cascade.
"That's all very worrying and is an additional reason why you want to remove
these big objects from orbit," McDowell told Space.com. "They can generate
this other debris that's smaller."
Small debris is tough to track, and there's already a lot of it up there.
About 900,000 objects between 0.4 inches and 4 inches wide (1 to 10 cm) are
whizzing around our planet, the European Space Agency estimates. And Earth
orbit hosts 128 million pieces of junk 0.04 inches to 0.4 inches (1 mm to 1
cm) in diameter, according to ESA.
Orbiting objects move so fast — about 17,150 mph (27,600 kph) at the
altitude of the International Space Station, for example — that even tiny
shards of debris can do serious damage to a satellite. | k**0
发帖数: 19737 | | a******0
发帖数: 121 | 3 哈哈。。。
但不知伤势如何。
【在 k**0 的大作中提到】
: 质量真好，这也不坏
: 可惜老将看不懂英语 lol
| C*********g
发帖数: 1 | 4 扇了你一耳光，脸都肿了，还自吹自己耐揍，竟然没被打坏。这，就尴尬了
【在 k**0 的大作中提到】
: 质量真好，这也不坏
: 可惜老将看不懂英语 lol
| k**0
发帖数: 19737 | 5 这是不可控事件，尴尬你麻痹啊
看不懂英语老子可以教你
【在 C*********g 的大作中提到】
: 扇了你一耳光，脸都肿了，还自吹自己耐揍，竟然没被打坏。这，就尴尬了
| n********g
发帖数: 6504 | 6 俄爹的事你鳖笑笑走开。军事卫星咋了。非洲猪瘟，万里投德尔塔都没吭声。
【在 m***a 的大作中提到】
: https://www.space.com/space-junk-collision-chinese-satellite-yunhai-1-02
: Space collision: Chinese satellite got whacked by hunk of Russian rocket in
: March
: By Mike Wall 6 days ago
: We may see more and more of these orbital smashups in the coming years.
: An artist's concept depicting the near-Earth orbital debris field, based on
: real data from the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office.
: An artist's concept depicting the near-Earth orbital debris field, based on
: real data from the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office. (Image credit: NASA
: Goddard Space Flight Center)
| y**h
发帖数: 3093 | 7 俄爹考验一下忠诚度
翠书记又过关了
in
on
on
【在 m***a 的大作中提到】
: https://www.space.com/space-junk-collision-chinese-satellite-yunhai-1-02
: Space collision: Chinese satellite got whacked by hunk of Russian rocket in
: March
: By Mike Wall 6 days ago
: We may see more and more of these orbital smashups in the coming years.
: An artist's concept depicting the near-Earth orbital debris field, based on
: real data from the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office.
: An artist's concept depicting the near-Earth orbital debris field, based on
: real data from the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office. (Image credit: NASA
: Goddard Space Flight Center)
| I*N
发帖数: 1 | | b******1
发帖数: 1 | 9 这也叫消息？这叫某猥琐男大胆假设，类似于美国世贸中心7号楼是美国人自己的CIA炸
的。
space这个网站不靠谱的消息多了去了 | z****8
发帖数: 5023 | 10 天顶是乌克兰火箭 云海是被火箭撞的 不是载荷
然后 也可能是NOAA-17。。。 美帝这玩意3月10号爆炸了 | C*********g
发帖数: 1 | 11 当然，嘴里都要说不可控，扇你一耳光是不小心，不是故意得
【在 k**0 的大作中提到】
: 这是不可控事件，尴尬你麻痹啊
: 看不懂英语老子可以教你
|
|
