[Keyboard Cowboy]

Space station crew bombarded with junk

Space station crew bombarded with junk

The crew of the International Space Station have riden out a threat of collision with a debris cloud in a Soyuz space capsule in an unusually close encounter that highlighted the dangers of a growing junk pile in space.

"The debris threat to the International Space Station has passed," NASA said in a statement.

The scare arose when the three member crew learned too late to take evasive action of an approaching a debris cloud that exposed the space station to a risk of a potentially catastrophic collision.

NASA appeared most concerned about a piece of a satellite motor that was close enough that the space station would ordinarily undertake an evasive maneuver, NASA said.

Laura Rochon, a NASA spokeswoman at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, had said the risk of collision was "very low."

"The piece itself is about one third of an inch and it's about 4.5km away," she said.

But Mike Fincke, the mission commander, Yuri Lonchakov, the number one flight engineer, and Sandy Magnus, the number two flight engineer, exited the space craft and battened themselves in the Soyuz spacecraft. Fincke and Magnus are Americans and Lonchakov is a Russian.

NASA said the move was a precaution in case the crew needed to detach from the space station, NASA said.

The all-clear was sounded at 12.45 pm EDT (1645 GMT) about ten minutes after the crew entered the capsule, the space agency said.

The US Strategic Command notified NASA of the debris field late Wednesday, but NASA said it was too late for flight controllers to coordinate a "debris avoidance" maneuver.

"Every once in a while, the crew has to do orbital debris avoidance maneuvers but this time they didn't do that because we have an upcoming launch possibly on Sunday and they need to stay at the same altitude," Rochon said.

The US Joint Space Operations Center tracks about 18,000 objects in orbit, so many that it has to decide which to follow most closely, like those that might fly by the International Space Station or manned space flights.

Experts estimate that there are more than 300,000 orbital objects measuring between one and 10cm in diameter and "billions" of smaller pieces.

Traveling at speeds of up to thousands of miles an hour they pose a risk of catastrophic damage to spacecraft.

Last month, a spent Russian satellite collided with an Iridium communications satellite, showering more debris in an orbit 436km above the space station.

US military trackers failed to anticipate that collision, the first between two intact satellites, the Pentagon said at the time.

The worst debris clouds are in low Earth orbit (LEO), between 800 and 1,500km above the Earth, and in geostationary orbit, about 35,000km up.

In January 2007, China tested an anti-satellite weapon, destroying a disused Chinese weather satellite, the Fengyun-1C, creating the largest man-made debris field in history and put 2,378 fragments greater than 5cm in low Earth orbit.

Great. We have not even started to collinise out space and all ready humans are f**king up outer space.
All those sci fi films are right. Humanity is a menance.

[HAVOC]

Originally Posted by Keyboard Cowboy

Space station crew bombarded with junk

Great. We have not even started to collinise out space and all ready humans are f**king up outer space.
All those sci fi films are right. Humanity is a menance.

KC for the LOVE OF ALL THAT'S HOLY! INSTALL THIS NOW!
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3099

Colonize
colonize - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

Menace
menace - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

lol... you know I love ya KC!

[Nagasama]

its crazy when you think of the damage such a small piece of debris can cause.

[Trotter]

It's the speed that it is moving that does it. A bullet is very small but it moves at a very rapid speed through the target. Plus the ISS was not designed with armor.

[Saxon]

This is mighty interesting, considering that this is a growing problem the public is not aware of. I think it was back in october 08 where the USA had to shoot down one of the older spy stats that would have managed to enter the atmosphere prity much intact so they shot it down before it managed to make landfall.

[Nagasama]

Originally Posted by Trotter

It's the speed that it is moving that does it. A bullet is very small but it moves at a very rapid speed through the target. Plus the ISS was not designed with armor.

i know...think about it....a piece of garbage as big as a drywall screw can cause immense damage. even smaller i reckon. i forget the smallest size of objects they track...but its tiny. i wonder why they didnt put plating on it? payload weight when it was being constructed? would thick plating even stop something (anything) moving 10,000+ MPH?

[Saxon]

To protect agenst something even approaching that kind of velocity would make the station to heavy even in segments half the size they are lifting now into orbit.

Oh an I think that the object they avoided was the smallest they can really see, or at least track very accurately. NORAD minds the ISS an shuttle missions and I think that ESA has there own independent radar augmented with what NORAD has, I think there is a limmit to what they can pin point from the lost tools to parts from old missions and natual NEO's they are reaching a breaking point.

[c0rr0sive]

They track things down to the micron now using lasers, but they CAN stop that sort of thing, not using thick heavy plates, but SEVERAL thinner lightweight plates composed of carbon fibers all seperated with a gap between each, that will slow down something far more drasticaly than one think sheet.

[Saxon]

Well from my understanding normal procedures of constructing armour are impractical in space, armour like CHOBOM are still to heavy to lift into space explosive reaction armour is to volatile and would cause more problems that the initial impact.

There is a serious cost to weight ratio and payload type that can be launched safely.

[Trotter]

The chunk that caused the alarm was only 5" across, but was moving at almost 4 miles per second. NASA watches for anything 10cm or larger.