ISS Fender Bender

wjsteele writes "Seems that the Space Station has had a minor fender bender. Sounds kind of scary... being in a space craft and hearing metal crunching (like an aluminum can.) Apparently some 'Minor' space debris struck the station around 2:30am this morning, while the astronauts were eating their wheaties." Update: 11/27 16:31 GMT by M : Looks like an experiment may be to blame.

Minor?

[KingDaveRa]

Minor? If I was floating about in space in something with walls as thick as a tin can, I would be rather worried by now.

According to This article on BBC News [bbc.co.uk] Michael Foale is no stranger to this: "He was onboard the Mir space station in 1987 when a Progress supply tanker crashed into it - one of the most dangerous incidents to have ever taken place in space."

I'd still be crapping my pants though. There's no jumping off this one.

Fender Bender ?

[mbone]

This is one of the weirdest things I have heard of -
- Both astronauts heard it
- By this point they should be pretty familar with the noises the station makes - for example, the thermal expansion / contraction as you go through the terminator.
- It did not sound like an explosion (typical velocities of space debris impacts is 5 kilometers per second or so - and meteorites impact at even higher velocities), so it probably wasn't a piece of random junk.
- They got out the mobile camera and couldn't see anything damaged.

So what was it ? Let's hope it wasn't some valve or other part failing, but I suspect we will hear more of this.

Re:2:30 AM, eh?

[golan]

Well, the most logical timezone to apply in space, I believe, would be GMT, kind of standard.
The military people use it when they talk about zulu time, right?, That would be common sense. But, maybe what people at NASA, ESA, or the russian agency think might the other way around!

Re:30,000 km/s can do a lot of damage

[Seahawk]

Except that the body in Armageddon didnt move with 30000 km/h compared to the shuttle, as it had fallen out of a spaceship with the same speed and direction of the first craft

FLOATING space junk?

[localroger]

Space junk does not "float," it zips along at seven miles per second. Any piece of space junk big enough to see would have completely destroyed at least one module of the ISS. Even if the space junk was in "almost" the same orbit as ISS (say, detached from the ISS itself previously) it would be going fast enough to do a hell of a lot of damage.

I don't have any idea what could have caused this, but it wasn't something randomly floating around that just bumped the station. What disturbs me more than the accident itself is that professionals who should know better are floating this idea that it might be like a shopping cart hitting your car. It makes no sense at all.

Re:FLOATING space junk?

[andrewscraig]

But you have to think relative. Relative to the speed of the space station, a piece of space junk "almost" in the same orbit as ISS is going "almost" the same speed as the ISS (unless one is being propelled by something). That's why it can just rub against the station without actually causing any damage.

Re:2:30 AM, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would also explain why they were eating their wheaties at 2:30 am. 2:30gmt == 7:30 est.

Re:30,000 km/s can do a lot of damage

[myom]

Anything hitting the space station at that speed (1/10 the speed of light) would cause enormous damage. Did you mean 30 000km/h?

Re:30,000 km/s can do a lot of damage

[Stween]

"That body could never have hit the second shuttle in the first place. It has the same speed as the first shuttle, and since there is no atmosphere to slow him down, it should float alongside it."

If memory serves from the movie, there was an awful lot of stuff floating around on the approach to the asteroid that could have slowed the body down quicker than a shuttle. A couple of strikes from those basketball-sized stones you mention could easily have kicked the body back a little.

That said, there's little point trying to analyse a movie that's clearly not intended to be scientifically accurate.

Re:MicroMetoriets

[Anonymous Coward]

Except...

a) the stations is designed to withstand mictometeor hits.

b) there is a capsule parked there permanantly for escape

c) in the event of a puncture, they can move to either the capsule or just out of the effected compartment, and seal off that area. decompression isn't very fast through a 1cm hole.

Re:30,000 km/s can do a lot of damage

[dAzED1]

that you could see. with detail, the body coming pretty much meant that the relative speed differential wasn't 30,000km/s. Or even 30,000km/h. Or even 300km/h. Ever seen a car drive towards you at 300km/h? Even without flalling arms, even with sharp, slick edges, its more blurry than that body was.

Just because something is in space doesn't mean that its relative speed to you is instantly 1/10 the speed of light - you realize that you're just one zero away, right? Additionally, just because you're in space and you hit something, doesn't mean your relative speed was all that high. I mean, if your relative speed is 1m/h different, and you're only 1m away...well, in 1h, you'll hit it.

Has no one heard of relativity here?

Re:A simplier explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a face spider crawling through those pipes. Nothing to worry about folks.

At least until astronauts return to Earth...

*creepy music*

Does this remind anyone of "Chernobyl"?

[geoswan]

The article talks about the different attitudes towards safety the two space agencies have...

The Russians consider themselves less rigid and more inventive than the Americans, who tend to follow every letter in the technical manuals, said Sergei Gorbunov, a spokesman for the Russian Space Agency.

Isn't this what caused the Chernobyl meltdown? IIRC, the technical staff were being inventive and improvising around some safety tests.

Re:FLOATING space junk?

[francium de neobie]

There are two extreme cases, and a lot of intermediates.

The orbital radius determines the tangential velocity of an orbiting object, but it doesn't determine its direction. You have to take the angle between the two velocity vectors into account in calculating the relative velocity.

In this case, assume r is the same. If both velocities have the same direction, then relative velocity is zero. If they're on the opposite direction, then the relative velocity is twice the original. For any other cases you'll need to grab a calculator and prey to the cos() or sin() functions.

How many more lives do we need to waste?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many more people must die in useless space experiments before people realize NASA is a useless money-pit stealing funds from desperately underfunded reforms here on Planet Earth? We need to dismantle NASA now before it's too late - Imagine what would happen if one of these space installations should come down over a populated area?

Re:Uhh

[Anonymous Coward]

If that had read read "you mean there are americans up there" it would have been modded as flamebait.

Hardly fair to us Europeans is it ?
Oh and yes, there are 2 europeans up there and no septics.

Re:A "brush"?

[Mr2cents]

However, the station is also moving at high speeds around the earth. If it moves in the same direction as the debris, they can move side by side without harm (or at least you don't get collisions in the km/s range).