ISS Successfully Dodges 'Unknown Piece of Space Debris' (cnet.com) 37
With space junk piling up around our planet, the International Space Station needed to perform a last-minute avoidance maneuver Tuesday to steer clear of an "unknown piece of space debris expected to pass within several kilometers." From a report: Mission Control in Houston conducted the move at 2:19 p.m. PT using the Russian Progress resupply spacecraft docked to the ISS to help nudge the station out of harm's way. "Out of an abundance of caution, the Expedition 63 crew will relocate to their Soyuz spacecraft until the debris has passed by the station," NASA said in a statement prior to the move. The maneuver went off smoothly, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine reported. "The astronauts are coming out of safe haven," he tweeted after the ISS relocated.
expected to pass within several kilometers. (Score:2)
How big is this piece of debris?
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It was unknown. The better question is how did they know to move the ISS if they didn't know it was coming? You know, being an unknown.
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I would bet it is in the article :P
Ground based radar saw it, so they moved the ISS.
"Unknown" is from what/where the debris is, and it was obviously not in the "catalog of known debris".
Re:expected to pass within several kilometers. (Score:5, Informative)
It's rather amazing that they are able to keep that good of an eye out for debris and track it all around earth's orbit. And not just things IN the same general orbit, but things passing through their orbit. It's a very 3-D game, with some objects going around at very elliptic orbits, or unusual orbital planes. Just imagine the bugs you see buzzing seemingly at random around a bright street light late at night, and NASA has to make sure none of them collide. It looks like utter chaos!
(that movie Gravity makes it seem so straightforward - regular intervals, one direction only, same exact orbital plane and inclination, highly concentrated debris, etc... that's not how it works, none of it - it's like how movies portray astroid fields with a stationary rock every 200 feet, when it's more like a randomly moving rock every 20 miles)
Anyway, they can only keep an eye on the big things. The smaller objects can't be tracked or predicted, and the ISS just has to be built tough enough to take it on the chin when one hits. A fleck of paint moving at 23,000 mph can do a surprising amount of damage. It's no wonder they move out of the way when something bigger is going to pass close by!
I bet someone has already done some frightening math and determined the odds of a "substantial collision" occurring on a yearly basis. And we'll never see that report because nobody wants to hear that there's a 0.2% chance per year of something wiping out the ISS.
Space is dangerous. A lot more so than the average person is aware.
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It was part of a Japanese rocket so it seems likely that the Japanese carefully tracked it when it went up and had entered details of its orbit into various databases.
Of course it still requires a lot of tracking and searching because it might not stay in that orbit and there are many untracked objects, but in this case they probably knew it was coming for a long time just from the database.
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So they can track the debris precisely enough to know that it was going to "come within 1.39 kilometres" (i.e. they knew the path downs to the 10s of metres) but they still needed to move the station?
Just for clarity, I am being sarcastic here. I realize that they moved the station because they couldn't actually guarantee that the object would stay on the predicted path (i.e. better safe than sorry).
Re:expected to pass within several kilometers. (Score:5, Informative)
yep NASA's got three different size "boxes" they project around the ISS, for varying degrees of alertness and reaction. Going entirely from memory here,
1) caution - no action needed but tracking closely
2) move if convenient (ie doesn't interfere with active sensitive experiment)
3) MOVE (don't care what it screws up, it's too close to risk)
So even for the same risks, sometimes they move, sometimes not. Also, the station requires periodic "reboosts" anyway, so sometimes if they have a reboost coming up and a level 1 pops up, they'll reschedule the reboost ahead of the encounter, since it's convenient to reduce a very low risk to a zero risk.
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You can find interesting stuff (on many topics) on the NASA Technical Reports Server [nasa.gov]:
Here's a good one detailing the ISS debris collision avoidance process [nasa.gov].
This May 2020 presentation [nasa.gov] says the "probability of International Space Station crew evacuation due to MMOD impact damage is approximately 13.7% over a 10-year period."
You could even use NASA's ORDEM [nasa.gov] to estimate the probability yourself, though you'd have to figure out the average or collision cross-sectional area. (I'll stick with the published numbe
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unknown as in they don't know that it was or where it came from, not that they didn't 'see' it.
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An unidentified piece of space debris. Are they implying this is debris from an alien space craft? Does this prove this existence of aliens?
Does this mean we are not alone? If we're not alone does this means uncertainty about our future. Does this mean we need to give up our rights and freedom so the government can protect us from a less than well understood threat? The MSM needs to jump on this and start belittling non-believers and those that don't conform. We need to activate sleeper cells to run around
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"How big is this piece of debris?"
2 tons, it's red and vaguely car-shaped they said.
kilometers... (Score:2)
hey US....even NASA works in kilometers - and anything metric...
as the rest of the world....
come in the win...
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'Kilometers to go before I sleep' just doesn't sound correct.
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Re:kilometers... (Score:5, Funny)
"I'll have have a litre of lager please"
Given that a litre is basically two pints, you may enjoy the shift to metric. Get wasted in half the orders!
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'Kilometers to go before I sleep' just doesn't sound correct.
It's not correct. Nobody expects famous quotes to be altered. Just real-life measurement.
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I have walked a kilometer in your shoes and now the miles make sense.
Re: kilometers... (Score:2)
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Hey we need to interoperate with Liberia. Have to order gallons of palm oil, if we asked in liters they won't be able to fill the orders.
Re: kilometers... (Score:1)
come in the win
SAE, metric or even English are all fine; pick one.
Odd.. (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.sciencealert.com/t... [sciencealert.com]
There they mention it wasn't unknown, it was :
The debris object that ISS avoided is now available on SpaceTrack as 2018-084CQ, 46477, from the breakup of Japan's H-2A F40 rocket stage. At 2221:07 UTC it passed within a few km of ISS at a relative velocity of 14 6 km/s, 422 km over the Pitcairn Is in the S Pacific
pic.twitter.com/2T3yFQoFMT
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The reason I come to the comments is for the debunking of the headlines.
Typical humans (Score:2)
Leaving their garbage wherever they go.
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How did they put it in Interstellar ;) :D
Newtons third law: In order to move forward you have to leave something behind
Probably didn't mean garbage though
I understand there is a cost issue, but there must be ways to clean up the space.
Unidentified not unknown (Score:2)
They would not be able to dodge by the active measures they took if it was unknown. It appears to have been unidentified. Is it any wonder people do not trust science reporting any more when they cannot even avoid sloppy language usage. Language usage is something journalists are supposed to be good with.
It was tiny space aliens (Score:2)
I was concerned (Score:2)
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Goose: No, he was, man. It was a really great move. He was inverted.
Charlie: You were in a 4G inverted dive with a piece of orbital debris?
Maverick: Yes, ma'am.
Charlie: At what range?
Maverick: About two meters.
Goose: Well, it's actually about one and a half, I think. It was one and a half. I've got a great Polaroid of it, and he's, he's right there. Must be one and a half.
Maverick: It was a nice picture....
Goose: Thanks, man. I like my pictures....
Deflector shields... (Score:1)
Make it so.
NASA seems to have changed their mind (Score:2)
"Out of an abundance of caution, the Expedition 63 crew will relocate to their Soyuz spacecraft until the debris has passed by the station," NASA said in a statement prior to the move.
The quotes appears in a NASA blog [nasa.gov] but the following blog entry [nasa.gov] has "the three Expedition 63 crew members were directed to move to the Russian segment of the station to be closer to their Soyuz MS-16 spacecraft as part of the safe haven procedure out of an abundance of caution". So it seems the crew didn't end up entering the Soyuz after all.