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Science U.S., Russian Satellites Collide in Space
Michael Barkoviak - February 12, 2009 3:49 AM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 83 comment(s) - last by cheetah2k.. on Feb 15 at 8:28 PM
An old Russian satellite thought to be flying harmlessly in space has collided with a satellite operated by an American company

A U.S. communications satellite reportedly ran into a defunct Russian satellite, which is the first time this type of incident has taken place, a U.S. military spokesperson publicly announced this week.

"This is the first, unfortunately," NASA chief scientist for orbital debris Nicholas Johnson said.  "Nothing to this extent" has taken place in the past.  "We've had three other accidental collisions between what we call catalog objects, but they were all much smaller than this."

A satellite privately owned by Iridium Satellite and the de-commissioned Russian satellite impacted with one another in low-Earth orbit, causing hundreds of smaller pieces of debris.  The U.S. Strategic Command's Joint Space Operations Center is now tracking between 500 and 600 pieces of debris, with pieces just 3.9 inches in diameter.

The company issued a statement announcing it "lost an operational satellite" sometime on Tuesday, after it impacted "a nonoperational" Russian satellite.  The satellite destruction will have little to no impact on the company's day-to-day operations, and is now "taking immediate action to address the loss."

Most satellites orbit at 36,000 kilometers above the Earth, while Iridium's 66 -- 65 satellites now -- orbit just 800 kilometers above Earth.  Orbiting at a lower altitude ensures the company has satellite telephone and data service for virtually the entire planet.

Space experts have become increasingly concerned that the orbit around Earth is becoming too crowded and the likelihood of satellites running into each other has greatly increased.  There especially is a growing concern that pieces from the recent space incident could eventually cause hundreds of small pieces of debris that could head towards the International Space Station (ISS).

A piece of debris -- even if it's the size of a pebble -- could cause devastation for the ISS and its flight crew.

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Space junk
By segerstein on 2/12/2009 4:38:14 AM , Rating: 3
There is really quite a lot of space junk. Maybe one way to get rid of it would be to destroy it with strong lasers.




RE: Space junk
By freeagle on 2/12/2009 4:47:14 AM , Rating: 2
What would you achieve? You are not going to evaporate the debris with laser. You'd just melt the metals, which would, before becoming solid again, lump into one chunk of metal blob, leaving you with the same weight in smaller volume. That would only make the damage at the point of impact more severe.


RE: Space junk
By BladeVenom on 2/12/2009 7:34:02 AM , Rating: 1
You heat it till it vaporizes. You know solid to liquid to gas.


RE: Space junk
By masher2 (blog) on 2/12/2009 10:13:15 AM , Rating: 5
> "You heat it till it vaporizes..."

...then condenses back to solid metal, in the coldness of space.


RE: Space junk
By BladeVenom on 2/12/2009 12:10:40 PM , Rating: 2
The vaporization causes thrust to alter the orbit so it ends up burning up in the atmosphere. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_broom


RE: Space junk
By Exirtis on 2/12/2009 7:26:40 PM , Rating: 2
Notably, however, this would be done with the laser(s) being positioned in space, not from the ground, since ground-based lasers would result in these object obtaining a higher orbit.

I mention this only because it seemed that the original laser post might have been thinking of ground-based lasing. *shrug*


RE: Space junk
By jimpaka on 2/13/2009 3:20:12 PM , Rating: 1
So you think that shooting a LASER at an object will apply a measurable amount of force to it? lmao @ you


RE: Space junk
By cheetah2k on 2/15/2009 8:28:14 PM , Rating: 2
All I can say is that I hope Iridium Satellite have up to date 3rd party, satellite collision, fire & theft insurance :-D


RE: Space junk
By geddarkstorm on 2/12/2009 1:48:03 PM , Rating: 5
It's also a near vacuum, so the vaporized gas would likely just diffuse instead of collate back together - there's no pressure to keep the gas localized and to drive condensation, and definitely not enough mass to create enough gravity. Besides, how would the gas get cold again? The only way for it to lose heat is through radiation.


RE: Space junk
By PrinceGaz on 2/12/2009 7:13:24 PM , Rating: 2
And won't it still lose heat through radiation, even if it is has now been seperated into individual atoms or molecules? Presumably if you have individual aluminium atoms at the still very high energy level when they were vaporised by the laser, they'll radiate that energy away even if they remain as single atoms. I think it is from electrons dropping to lower energy-levels or something like that. I am guessing here, so please correct me if I'm wrong (I probably am, as I'm very much guessing on shaky knowledge of these things).

Those aluminium atoms at whatever temperature would presumably bump into hydrogen or something else sooner or later, and possibly join with it, but sooner or later because of its much higher atomic/molecular mass than what is around it, get drawn back down to the Earth by gravity because of lots of near misses with other lighter atoms/particles such that it is unable to sustain its orbit. Hmmm, that seems plausible, but could be scientifically totally inaccurate, I don't know.


RE: Space junk
By afkrotch on 2/12/2009 10:36:17 AM , Rating: 2
And then back to liquid, then to solid again in no time. Since it's cold in space and all.


RE: Space junk
By ZOKAPOINK on 2/12/2009 2:13:21 PM , Rating: 1
Ha, Ha, Ha, VAPORIZE??? I'm not sure you know what the word means. It doesn't exactly work like in the movies, you know...

"Vaporize"... What will they come up with next!

Perhaps we should teletransport-futurize-and-telemorphisize it or fed-ex it to-another-galaxy-blackholisize and bust-it-into-oblivionisizeness it, and send it to Darth Vader or Captain Kirk so they know what to do with them...

ha ha ha ha ha


RE: Space junk
By Dreifort on 2/12/2009 2:44:34 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
"Vaporize"... What will they come up with next!


VaPOOrizer.


RE: Space junk
By ZOKAPOINK on 2/12/2009 6:15:52 PM , Rating: 1
Yeah, ok, fine let's vaporize it!! Yeah! fire lasers! torpedos away! Uzi the junk! Let's all yell at it and fart at it. Maybe that'll do.

Vaporize! yeah, that's an amazing idea! duh


RE: Space junk
By MRwizard on 2/13/2009 1:40:36 AM , Rating: 2
They'll come up with the triangularly circular :)


RE: Space junk
By hameed on 2/12/2009 4:47:21 AM , Rating: 2
That would be "space weapons" which just got banned, remember?


RE: Space junk
By Murloc on 2/12/2009 8:02:39 AM , Rating: 2
no need for space weps, you can just use old satellites to crash into others.


RE: Space junk
By segerstein on 2/12/2009 8:12:20 AM , Rating: 2
Smart guy! This way you create even more debris! Why did all the space powers protest so much when the Chinese destroyed a satellite in 2007? Because it resulted in thousands of small pieces of debris.

Yes, we have a "graveyard orbit", but not all the junk is there.


RE: Space junk
By grath on 2/12/2009 7:21:58 PM , Rating: 2
Yes, at this time such a capability would be considered a weapon. In the future, such a capability may be as necessary and basic to a spacecraft as windshield wipers are to a car. Almost every tool that humans have devised has the potential to be used as a weapon. Something like a gun is pretty clear cut, its utility as a tool to hunt and kill game (or people) is only useful on the ground, and in space its only good at putting holes in someones spacecraft. A laser is an extremely useful tool in space for a variety of applications, but the high power that makes it useful also makes it a weapon. Can we really deny ourselves such a useful tool, and expect others to do the same, on the fear that it will be misused? Where does that end? Do we then say that you cant build mass driver propulsion because it can be used as a railgun? Or you cant take that hammer out on a spacewalk because you might throw it through the hull of a rival spacecraft?


RE: Space junk
By TSS on 2/12/2009 5:06:54 AM , Rating: 5
lasers are reserved for sharks. if you want to clean up space, just send a vacuum cleaner up there.


RE: Space junk
By freeagle on 2/12/2009 5:14:44 AM , Rating: 2
What would you like to suck in the space? :) You could turn on 1MW vacuum cleaner next to a tiny debris and it would just smile back at you.


RE: Space junk
By tmouse on 2/12/2009 8:05:44 AM , Rating: 5
How about the new Dyson "Black -Hole" model? I don't recall if it's a canister or upright.


RE: Space junk
By CBeck113 on 2/12/2009 6:11:19 AM , Rating: 5
"IT'S MEGAMAID!"


RE: Space junk
By BarkHumbug on 2/12/2009 6:33:09 AM , Rating: 5
"She's gone from suck to blow!"


RE: Space junk
By Bateluer on 2/12/2009 8:40:35 AM , Rating: 2
I was wondering how long it'd take for a Spaceballs reference to follow the vacuum cleaner reference.


RE: Space junk
By theapparition on 2/12/2009 9:04:23 AM , Rating: 2
Unless the OP was incredibly stupid, that's exactly what the vacuum comment was trying to achieve.


RE: Space junk
By meepstone on 2/12/2009 8:40:52 AM , Rating: 2
i just giggled.

And may the Schwartz be with you


RE: Space junk
By Captain Orgazmo on 2/12/2009 3:41:39 PM , Rating: 2
I suggest we send that fool Roger Wilco and the SCS Eureka.


RE: Space junk
By BaronMatrix on 2/12/2009 9:59:12 AM , Rating: 2
Wow, what happened to radars and ion engines?


RE: Space junk
By Shadowself on 2/12/2009 10:35:04 AM , Rating: 5
More accurately, "Who was asleep at the switch?"

Moderate to large satellites are very easily tracked. At the altitude of the Iridium constellation the orbits are very accurately predictable for weeks, if not months, in advance. Each Iridium satellite has station keeping thrusters on it. I should have been very easy for them to have moved the Iridium satellite out of the way temporarily then moved it back.

The only possible explanation is that the Iridium satellite was so close to the end of its life that it did not have enough propellant on board to accomplish the move and the company was keeping it operational to get every last dime's worth of use out of it.

They aren't supposed to do that. When the propellant gets too low they are supposed to de-orbit it. This should have been plenty of propellant to do the move to avoid the hit.

Was Iridium playing it too close to the edge on propellant and thus did not have enough to avoid this collision? OR Was the orbit team at Iridium asleep at the switch? Seems like one or the other was the case.


RE: Space junk
By afkrotch on 2/12/2009 10:39:16 AM , Rating: 2
Satellite insurance scam.


RE: Space junk
By fic2 on 2/12/2009 12:34:49 PM , Rating: 3
Unfortunately the guy that was tracking that satellite was laid off a couple of weeks ago...


RE: Space junk
By Shadowself on 2/12/2009 10:12:22 AM , Rating: 4
In reality a space laser could work.

The laser does not have to destroy the piece of junk. It only has to vaporize a small part of it -- especially if the piece junk is relatively small and in a low Earth orbit.

Think of it this way. The craft with the laser gets "in front" of the piece of junk in the piece of junk's orbit and hits the junk with a high power laser. This laser then vaporizes a small amount of the junk. Since the vaporization happens on the leading side of the piece of junk it acts as if it were a very small rocket motor thrusting in the opposite direction of the travel of the piece of junk. This slows the piece of junk down and drops it into a lower orbit. If you burn off enough you can lower the orbit enough to get the piece of junk into the upper atmosphere where, over time, it will experience continually increasing drag as it goes deeper and deeper into the atmosphere. Finally, when drag is enough it will re-enter and burn up.

Clearly, larger pieces of junk or those in higher orbits will need more material vaporized and thus either longer duration laser hits or a more powerful laser. However, in theory this *could* work.

The two major "issues" with this are
1) you effectively have a "weapon" in space, and
2) you have to very narrowly focus the laser so as to not hit operational satellites that might be several hundred kilometers "behind" that piece of junk you are trying to hit (a powerful enough laser to ablate a piece of junk could still be damaging [though not ablating] to a satellite much farther away that is along the same line of sight).

The first issue is a political one that may never be solved. The second one is an engineering/design issue that in theory could be solved.


RE: Space junk
By afkrotch on 2/12/2009 10:41:51 AM , Rating: 2
How about an orbiter with a fishing net?


RE: Space junk
By c4xp on 2/13/2009 1:19:54 AM , Rating: 2
I say: 'Every cloud has a silver lining', make MORE space junk.
It will make life miserable for aliens trying to conquer us.


I'm curious
By bodar on 2/12/2009 5:31:50 AM , Rating: 5
How exactly do you "de-commission" a satellite? Do you just stop paying attention to it? That may be the problem here.




RE: I'm curious
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 2/12/2009 6:55:02 AM , Rating: 5
Correct. Idealy they need to set these craft on suicide plunges when they are no longer being oeprated. Make sure it burns up on reentry.


RE: I'm curious
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 2/12/2009 7:09:43 AM , Rating: 2
Ugh my typing is atrocious in that post. Oh well, that's what I get for posting before 7am.


RE: I'm curious
By ikkeman2 on 2/12/2009 7:09:57 AM , Rating: 1
which is where the trouble starts. toxic and radiavtive debri falling to earth - all you can do is hope it burns up so completely that only trase molecules are left -
you can be sure it'll fail eventually. Best just to park your no longer functional hardware in a useless orbit.


RE: I'm curious
By Fnoob on 2/12/2009 9:09:35 AM , Rating: 2
Agreed, however we must make sure nothing lands on Australia, or they will send us a snarky cleanup bill we can't afford now.


RE: I'm curious
By afkrotch on 2/12/2009 10:44:16 AM , Rating: 2
Or have enough fuel to have them do suicide plunges onto the moon. Then we'd have some scrap metal in place for a lunar colony.


RE: I'm curious
By Amiga500 on 2/12/2009 10:59:53 AM , Rating: 2
Unfortunately el tree huggerios will object to deorbiting things like RORSATs...


RE: I'm curious
By Aloonatic on 2/13/2009 6:17:02 AM , Rating: 2
I'm curious as to the scrap value of these things. Are they made up of exotic and valuable materials?

I suppose it'll be a long time until there is a cost effective method for recovering them but there's probably some valuable "junk" floating about up there.


Great
By zinfamous on 2/12/2009 12:26:07 PM , Rating: 1
Yet another piece of Russian junk f**king up a perfectly functional, and productive, piece of property.

I imagine all of the other useless and impoverished Russian satellites are going to gang-up and start collectivising their neighboring productive and economically stable international satellites.

The bourgeoise satellites that resist will be banished to the Gulag, or shattered into thousands of tiny space bits.




RE: Great
By ZOKAPOINK on 2/12/2009 2:00:53 PM , Rating: 2
Chill Great. It's not a matter of a Russian satellite hitting one of our satellites or the other way around. It's just a funny case of bumping into each other.
Don't take it personal. It's just a matter of too much junk in space from both Russia and the U.S.

No need to start nooking anybody... It's just an accident.


RE: Great
By hduser on 2/12/2009 4:44:14 PM , Rating: 2
It's no accident. It's the space equivalent of the swoop and squat. Get a clunker of a car drive in front of a nice insured vehicle then slam on the brakes and claim you ruined your car and your spine and get mega $$$ from the insurance. I'm sure the Russians are lining up their lawyer right now ;)


RE: Great
By ThisSpaceForRent on 2/12/2009 5:31:58 PM , Rating: 2
Maybe not as funny as you think. The Iridium network has many military uses.


RE: Great
By ZOKAPOINK on 2/12/2009 6:25:05 PM , Rating: 1
Ok man, please stop. You're making me all affraid. Now I'm getting all serious and a deep concern frown. Maybe this is the end for the world! Oh my god!! And I've only done like 25 girls in my whole life! Nuclear war is here!! Oh no, the Russians!! Iran!! N.Korea!! Chávez... I don't know who's on us now! I ain't paranoid I swear, this is for real!!


RE: Great
By hduser on 2/12/2009 6:43:23 PM , Rating: 2
Puh-leeze... So they need to do this what another 66 times to knockout the entire Iridium network? I'm sure the US will catch on after the second or third collision with another or the same "defunct" Russian satellite.


RE: Great
By ZOKAPOINK on 2/12/2009 7:01:54 PM , Rating: 2
Man, it's amazing how much we live in fear, thinking that we're under siege all the time, that the rest of the world has nothing else to do and is out to get us. I wonder if it's like that in other countries and other peoples. We are a paranoid country. When did we change so much?? 911?? Perhaps. And yes, that was sad, that happened and it was most painful, yes. And we all felt it badly.
But this news is that two satellites crashed, that's all. There is a lot of junk out there, and it's bound to happen again, and it won't necessarily mean agression from the Russians. That's all. That's all.
Instead of thinking where to hide, we should come up with a real solution for cleaning up out there (please don't say vaporize again)


RE: Great
By ThisSpaceForRent on 2/12/2009 9:59:09 PM , Rating: 2
Yup, I'm one of those paranoid people that puts motive and location together to create insane thoughts. Where's my tin foil hat? =)

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/12/us.russia.satel...


Planetes!
By Hokum on 2/12/2009 5:08:52 AM , Rating: 3
All we need as a spare shuttle and a crew of miss fits to go on junk collecting duty!




RE: Planetes!
By ekv on 2/12/2009 6:33:30 AM , Rating: 2
that'd be an interesting video game ....

For kids, of course, it is Planetes. Although the twist is that they're learning orbital dynamics along with your standard character development. Sure, throw in a Hohmann-transfer here and a Symplectic-integrator there (for calculating a potential intercept). Check out the wikipedia entry ... LOL!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symplectic_integrator

Might need an American to be a captain though.... While Sully ain't a mis-fit, I'd trust him to fly the Enterprise [space shuttle, if it ever got commissioned].


RE: Planetes!
By Lazarus Dark on 2/12/2009 8:35:58 AM , Rating: 2
I thought exactly the same thing. Planetes is a little hard to get into, but after the first disc it gets kinda interesting. Maybe they really had something there?


RE: Planetes!
By saiga6360 on 2/12/2009 10:03:16 AM , Rating: 2
Once they start sending more space stations and people into space, it is only a matter of time before disaster strikes.


RE: Planetes!
By nafhan on 2/12/2009 10:16:20 AM , Rating: 2
I'm not sure why, but it would probably help if the crew of misfits had experience working on oil platforms.


One way system
By blowfish on 2/12/2009 8:21:53 AM , Rating: 2
Wonder if it would help if they instigated a strict one-way system. Anyone know if they do that already? You'd think they'd all be circulating in the same direction as the earth's rotation.

Eventually it will get to the point where some sort of clean-up robot is worth consideration, a Space Roomba.

For anyone concerned about any radioactive products being burned up on re-entry - the amounts of radioactive substances involved are tiny compared with those generated and allowed to escape into the atmosphere or environment by coal-fired and nuclear power stations, the disposal of medical and industrial radiological products etc.




RE: One way system
By HotFoot on 2/12/2009 11:24:00 AM , Rating: 2
Almost all satellites orbit in the general direction of the Earth's rotation, simply because it's incredibly expensive to push them the other way around. However, constellations like Iridium, GPS, etc. have a variety of orbits at various inclinations, so there is a significant North-South movement of the satellites and not strictly East-West. Therefore, there will always be times when paths cross within a few hundred kilometres of each other or maybe even less.

The other thing is that no orbit is actually circular. There is always at least a bit, even if unintentional, of an elliptical shape, so the satellite is actually oscillating in terms of altitude and velocity.

Then you throw in perturbations because Earth's gravity well isn't perfectly smooth, etc etc and there just isn't going to be a way to permantently ensure that two satellites won't be in relatively close quarters - in space terms - at large relative velocities.


RE: One way system
By HotFoot on 2/12/2009 11:29:53 AM , Rating: 2
Oh yeah and on the radioactive front, even forgetting about man-made radioactive materials, what is the influx or natural generation of radioactive materials from space or in the upper atmosphere?

I'd have to think that a nuclear battery would really only be a big problem if it didn't break up in the upper atmosphere and somehow burst at relatively low altitude over a populated area. That would be a freak accident and it should be evaluated in similar terms to, say, aerospace safety standards: a system shall be designed so that a technical fault causing a 'catastrophic' (ie. significant loss of life) event will occur only once ever billion flight hours.

I once read an opinion piece that aircraft shouldn't be allowed to fly over oceans until it's proven to be 100% safe. So many people just don't seem to get that there is no such thing as 100% safe (is there really 100% anything, ever?). Is 99.99999% safe good enough for you?


RE: One way system
By hduser on 2/12/2009 2:46:27 PM , Rating: 2
Well about the radioactive materials, I don't recall any current non-military satellites that uses radioactive material in earth orbit. Usually they use RTG for deep space mission where sunlight isn't plentiful to generate power. They might have used radioactive materials in very early satellites maybe but earth bound orbit gets plenty of sunlight. Even so, RTG have their nuclear material bound in ceramic so they won't burn up in orbit at least the ones I know of.


It's time
By kontorotsui on 2/12/2009 4:17:58 AM , Rating: 2
It's time for the space tennis racquet?




RE: It's time
By MrPoletski on 2/12/2009 4:26:40 AM , Rating: 2
this sounds more like a game of marbles in space...


RE: It's time
By ZOKAPOINK on 2/12/2009 6:31:53 PM , Rating: 2
YEAH. HMMM, BAR POOL. SOONER OR LATER THERE'LL BE ANOTHER HIT AND DOWN THE HOLE.


At some point they'll have to target the junk
By aquraishi on 2/12/2009 7:19:50 AM , Rating: 2
As the risk of debris strikes climbs someone will need to develop a limited space weapon with the ability to track incoming high-speed objects and destroy them.

Anyone got plans for one I can develop and then sell to NASA, ESA, JAXA, SpaceX, ISRO, ROSCOSMOS, CNSA... Looks like there's a market.




By meepstone on 2/12/2009 8:44:05 AM , Rating: 3
in macross they got these satellites with lasers that shoot anything coming into atmosphere thats not allowed in. go develop that.


"This is the first, unfortunately,"
By tastyratz on 2/12/2009 8:11:27 AM , Rating: 2
He quoted: "This is the first, unfortunately,"
Shouldn't it read: "This is the first, fortunately ," ?

Considering the sheer quantity of the crap we have floating up there its amazing that we haven't had many incidents of this nature. We are a few satellites away from looking like saturn at this point. What kind of regulation do these things actually see?

How many rogue dead satellites are in the sky like that one?
Where is the space janitor when you need him?




By SMOGZINN on 2/12/2009 9:00:24 AM , Rating: 2
While there might seem to be a lot of junk floating around up there it is really an insignificant amount compared to how much room there is for stuff to float around.
What I mean is Earth orbit is BIG!
We are talking about a sphere several times the size of the Earth and several hundred miles deep. That is a lot of area for things to float around in. The odds of anything hitting anything else is still rather small.


Vaporize yeah right ok.
By Tombpsyco on 2/12/2009 1:02:00 PM , Rating: 2
In order to have vapor you would need liquid. In space, since it is a vacuum there is no liquid. You have one type of mass in space, solid, it is either in measurable mass state or the size calculated using physics. Both types are still considered solid. Water in space comes in one form only. If you can't understand how it became solid, I suggest you open your freezer and look inside. There is no vapor in space only clouds of solid particles.




RE: Vaporize yeah right ok.
By maven81 on 2/12/2009 1:43:22 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
You have one type of mass in space, solid


A gas is not a solid. Nebulas are not solid.
Water, can and does exist as a gas in space.


Who did whom
By dubber on 2/12/2009 8:55:18 PM , Rating: 2
So, nobody noticed contradiction between two statements/paragraphs one right after the other?

"An old Russian satellite thought to be flying harmlessly in space has collided with a satellite operated by an American company

A U.S. communications satellite reportedly ran into a defunct Russian satellite .."




RE: Who did whom
By donxvi on 2/13/2009 6:14:10 PM , Rating: 2
No contradiction, "has collided with" doesn't imply who hit whom, only that they hit, now "has collided into" might.


collision an accident?
By greyparrot1 on 2/13/2009 3:56:00 AM , Rating: 2
I don't think so. The russian sattelite was launched in 1993. It wasn't that old. I think this is the first challenge to the Obama administration from Putin. Russia is in dire straits with the price of oil at multiyear lows and it's no coincidence that a "defunct" sattilite just happens to collide with a US Military Iridian sattelite used for US military communications(bought from motorola for a mere fraction of its cost). This is the first challenge to President Obama we just don't know the details.




RE: collision an accident?
By rcc on 2/13/2009 4:28:20 PM , Rating: 2
While the military does make use of the system,Iridium is not a US Military satellite, and never has been.


Move it
By freeagle on 2/12/2009 3:57:25 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
A piece of debris -- even if it's the size of a pebble -- could cause devastation for the ISS and its flight crew


Well, they can try to "move" it again.




So much for...
By roostitup on 2/12/2009 4:32:55 AM , Rating: 2
the space elevator, we need to build the space vacuum.




spaceballs
By cdrsft on 2/12/2009 9:01:07 AM , Rating: 2
*Nelson Voice* HA-HA




Movie Time
By DtTall on 2/12/2009 10:08:42 AM , Rating: 2
Wall-E is unamused by the amount of space junk orbiting our planet. For now.




By PAPutzback on 2/12/2009 10:18:18 AM , Rating: 2
Then it could either vaporize them, collect them to pull them into the atmosphere to burn up, or just collect them to be picked up from a future space shuttle mission. Either way this stuff needs to be cleaned up.

Add this to the stimulus package to create some jobs.




By Dreifort on 2/12/2009 10:43:08 AM , Rating: 2
As intelligent humans, we should create some nanites that will eat/erode the metal. Just release them onto de-commissioned satellites and in no time they will consume all the metal and minerals.

..But when they turn on the humans and start attacking them...well, that's another problem for another time.




HA HA BUMPERS!!
By ZOKAPOINK on 2/12/2009 1:56:20 PM , Rating: 2
HA,HA,HA,HA,HA,AH,AH!! MAYBE WE SHOULD START THINKING ABOUT BUMPERS AND TRAFFIC LIGHTS!! AND TICKETS TO NAUGHTY AND BULLY SATELLITES. HA HA HA HA!!




Space Junk
By drycrust on 2/12/2009 3:09:27 PM , Rating: 2
How about something like a large ball of putty with some thrusters on a decaying orbit. Ground control then directs it on a collision course with known bits of junk which collide into and impale themselves inside the putty. After a finite period of time, e.g. two years, the ball of putty drops out of orbit and burns up in the atmosphere, taking all the junk with it.




Built to last!
By Griswold on 2/12/2009 5:18:35 PM , Rating: 2
5 bucks say its just a fender bender on the soviet... err... russian satellite! :P




LEO vs GEO
By rcc on 2/12/2009 6:02:45 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Most satellites orbit at 36,000 kilometers above the Earth,


Do you have a reference for this statement? There are many GEO satellites, but most of the multiple satellite constellations are LEO in variously inclined orbits.




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