Russian satellite breakup sends ISS astronauts to shelter
On Wednesday, June 26, 2024, shortly after 9 p.m. EDT, NASA instructed the nine astronauts aboard the International Space Station to head to their shelters. This precautionary measure was in response to the breakup of a Russian satellite, RESURS-P1. The astronauts spent about an hour in their shelters before it became clear the space station was not in the path of the debris.
More on RESURS-P1
According to Leo Labs, a California company that provides collision avoidance service and real-time conjunction alerts for satellite operators:
The approximately 6,000 kg [13,000 lb] satellite was in a nearly circular orbit at about 355 km [220 miles up] at the time of the event.
While it is not yet clear what caused the breakup of the Russian satellite, the satellite ended its service back in 2021. So what was previously one defunct space object is now more than 100 pieces. With the increasing amounts of satellites, both operational and past their useful lives, accumulating in orbit, the crowded space around Earth is becoming more and more of a concern. According to the Orbiting Now website, there are currently more than 10,000 active satellites in orbit around Earth, with nearly 3,000 inactive satellites still in orbit.
I mean... I hate what the fucker is doing to Ukraine.
But Russians have their spot in history in terms of great space exploration advancements.
They had a space station up there first. Before everyone else. The MIR. So.... I wouldn't doubt on their capability to put their own space station again.
would love to know. because they really don't tend to do that, unless they are in the process of crashing into the thicker athmosphere. And that was not the case, as it's sharing a close enough orbit to the iss
They sure don't tend to do that, but there are still mundane explanations for this. An unintentional collision between the satellite and another object being one of them.
"I find it hard to believe they would use such a big satellite as an ASAT target," McDowell said.
Considering all the ways they've been ridiculously incompetent in their invasion of Ukraine, I could actually see this incident being due to ineptitude.
Satellites don't just spontanously burst into 100 pieces.
Well...
There are at least three possibilities that occur to me, and two of them probably aren't done by Russia intentionally.
One is that they tested it as a target for some kind of anti-satellite weapon. It was decomissioned and probably expendable, so that'd be consistent with targets of past anti-satellite weapon tests. Russia has been talking about anti-satellite weapons and is not happy about us providing satellite reconaissance data to Ukraine. US intelligence also believes that Russia has been considering deployment of a nuclear anti-satellite weapon.
A senior Defense Department official told lawmakers Wednesday that Russia is developing an “indiscriminate” anti-satellite nuclear device that would pose a threat to all satellites operated by countries and companies around the world.
"The concept that we are concerned about is Russia developing and — if we are unable to convince them otherwise — to ultimately fly a nuclear weapon in space which will be an indiscriminate weapon” that would not distinguish among military, civilian or commercial satellites, John Plumb, the assistant secretary of defense for space policy, said at a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing.
He said the threat was “not imminent” but that the Pentagon and the “entire” Biden administration were concerned about the program.
This isn't that -- that's in earlier stages and we'd know immediately if something like that were used -- but I suppose it's probably a fair bet that anti-satellite stuff is being discussed in Moscow. That'd be on Moscow, if they did that.
The second is that it got hit by some kind of debris too small for us to detect. If we don't know about it, the Russians probably don't either, and probably couldn't avoid it.
NASA's main source of data for debris in the size range of approximately 5 mm to 30 cm is the Haystack Ultrawideband Satellite Imaging Radar (HUSIR). The HUSIR radar, operated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory, has been collecting orbital debris data for the ODPO since 1990 under an agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense. HUSIR statistically samples the debris population by "staring" at selected pointing angles and detecting debris that fly through its field-of-view.
The data are used to characterize the debris population by size, altitude, and inclination. From these measurements, scientists have concluded that there are approximately 500,000 debris fragments in orbit with sizes down to one centimeter. The NASA ODPO also collects data from the Haystack Auxiliary Radar (HAX) located next to the main HUSIR antenna. Although HAX is less sensitive than HUSIR, it operates at a different wavelength (1.8 cm for HAX versus 3 cm for HUSIR) and has a wider field-of-view.
Since 1990, the Goldstone Orbital Debris Radar has collected orbital debris data for debris as small as about 2 mm in LEO for the NASA ODPO. It is located in the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in the Mojave Desert near Barstow, California and is operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The Goldstone Orbital Debris Radar is an extremely sensitive sensor capable of detecting a 3-mm metallic sphere at 1000 km, which makes it an incredibly useful tool in the characterization of the sub-centimeter-sized debris population.
Even with all that, my guess is that there's probably debris up there that can cause a lot of damage. The example above is small, but also a metallic sphere. I'd bet that there are some materials that are a lot more transparent to the radar that they're using.
Low Earth Orbit objects are moving at a pretty good clip:
In very simple terms, low Earth orbit (LEO) is exactly what it sounds like: An orbit around the Earth with an altitude that lies towards the lower end of the range of possible orbits. This is around 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) or less. The majority of satellites are to be found in LEO, as is the International Space Station (ISS).
In order to remain in this orbit, a satellite has to travel at around 17,500 miles per hour (7.8 kilometers per second), at which speed it takes around 90 minutes to complete an orbit of the planet.
7.45 g at 360 m/s for one type of ammo, about 4.6% as fast.
So something that weighs 0.34 grams will have the same energy as a 9mm round.
A paperclip weighs maybe 1 gram. So something in LEO a third the weight of a paperclip will hit as hard as a bullet from a Glock.
It could also be a micrometeor not in Earth orbit coming in from outer space. I don't know if we can detect those. Those could be moving a lot faster (and hence could be even smaller to cause a given amount of damage).
A third possibility is that something on the satellite exploded. It's got maneuvering fuel with oxidizer...I'd guess that there are probably ways for that to blow up. If there's something that has a lot of kinetic energy, that could fail. Flywheel failures can be pretty exciting in terms of shrapnel going everywhere, and if they use gyros to do orientation, it might be possible for one of those to shatter:
A reaction wheel (RW) is used primarily by spacecraft for three-axis attitude control, and does not require rockets or external applicators of torque. They provide a high pointing accuracy,[1]: 362 and are particularly useful when the spacecraft must be rotated by very small amounts, such as keeping a telescope pointed at a star.
Also, regarding Russia knowing what's up there and being able to talk to it, apparently earlier in the week Ukraine attacked a Russian satellite communication facility, so I dunno what secondary implications that might have, whether it could relate to this satellite situation.
Crimea Videos Show Fires Blazing As Space Radar Targeted with ATACMS—Report
Ukraine has struck a Russian deep space network hub in annexed Crimea—allegedly used by Russian Aerospace Forces—using U.S.-supplied missiles, according to local reports.
Kyiv's forces launched the ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) attack across Crimea on Sunday night, and "successfully struck" Russia's Center for Long-Range Space Communications in the village of Vitino in the Saky region, open-source intelligence X (formerly Twitter) account OSINTtechnical said.
"Multiple areas of the facility are burning," the account said.
The center is one of three complexes that make up Russia's Yevpatoria Center for Deep Space Communications, which supports manned and robotic space missions. The facility was reportedly previously struck in December 2023 with British-supplied Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missiles.
If it's a "radar" site, then it presumably deals with stuff nearby.
I don't think that Russia needs deep space communications facilities to talk to stuff in LEO -- hobbyists can do that with simple setups -- but it was apparently a military facility, and I think that most military applications today are for LEO. Maybe GLONASS, which has military applications and is in a larger orbit.
And Ukraine presumably isn't gonna be expending limited weapons on it unless it's got military significance to Ukraine. So maybe it was also being used to talk to satellites in LEO, dunno.
Sci-fi has made me believe something small going that fast would just punch a nice clean hole through anything it hits.
Now, I realize it most likely isn't quite Hollywood clean, but the Resurs P is (was) basically the size of a small bus (8 by 3 metres) and 7000kg, so I'd imagine it would need to get hit by quite a big thing to cause it to actually properly explode.
What ever happened to that Swiss space junk net? I feel like we could just go around and hoover up all the Russian satellites they seem to be using for target practice.
From the little I've followed on this topic, any kind of kinetic space junk cleanup (meaning physically touching or capturing the junk) is going to be very very limited in effectiveness for the majority of the junk. For really large things, like an entire satellite still intact, it can make sense, but these are very few of the space junk pieces in orbit today.
The problem is two fold: Space is huge and the junk is very far apart. There are hundreds of thousands of pieces of space junk (mostly small).
The most promising approach to address the majority of the junk is a "directed energy" method. This would be using something like a laser to slightly push space junk into lower orbits where the thin air will slow it over time and it would fall back to Earth.
A laser? Mount it on ISS and expand the solar panels and install a battery/capacitor. It might be slow.. but for the smaller stuff burning it up might work, or not?
Not because of Kessler syndrome, just your run of the mill space debris reentering the atmosphere and increasing the amounts of certain metals up there that contribute to ozone depletion. In other words, that may well happen even if we're lucky and avoid Kessler syndrome.
Wait… I thought Apple left China because of slave(ish) labor reasons. But are still using Foxconn which is a Chinese company?
Ah found this:
“Like many of its competitors, Apple has relied on China for assembling its products for years. But political and economic factors have forced the company, as well as the broader tech sector, to rethink that approach by seeking partners from across the region.”
(Link
You can take the production out of China, but not China out of production…all for ‘optics’.
Ah, my bad- so it is. To be honest all I’ve ever heard about the Foxconn iPhone factories in china is them using Chinese semi slave labor run by Chinese people.
I guess taiwan number one China is still a bit shady at times...
I saw one in person for the first time like a week ago, and as much as it looks like something out of tron in photos, it looks like a spray-painted cardboard larp truck in person.
The majority don't learn that the only reason we have a weekend, 38 hour work week, maternity leave, sick leave, annual leave, severance, OHS, etc etc is because workers fought, and died, for all of them.
The state and corporations worked together to crush labor movements, using both the police and military, right up until they were passed into law. Apple won't do shit about this unless it impacts image/profitability.
This is why it is important we aren't divided and that our anger is directed at least in the general direction instead of at each other. If Blair Mountain happened today half the miners would fight the other half.
Well that's the neat part, it's by design. It's not a coincidence that now when we are more connected to each other than ever, now that instant communication would make it possible to coordinate globally, the powers that be instead focus on divisiveness above all else, on misinformation and contrarianism above all else. A nation divided is too busy fighting each other to realize they can make it over the mountain.
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