2.9-Ton Battery Pallet Becomes Largest Mass Ever Discharged From Space Station (gizmodo.com) 59
"A pallet of batteries was released from the International Space Station last week, becoming the heaviest single piece of junk ever jettisoned from the station," reports UPI:
Mission controllers in Houston commanded the Canadarm2 robotic arm to release an external pallet loaded with the 2.9 tons of nickel-hydrogen batteries into Earth's orbit Thursday morning. "It is safely moving away from the station and will orbit Earth between two to four years before burning up harmlessly in the atmosphere," NASA said in a statement.
Gizmodo shares a photo of the pallet orbiting 265 miles (427 km) above Chile. And they add that this chain of events starte in 2011 when NASA decided to switch the Space Station from nickel-hydrogen batteries to lithium-ion batteries. This effort required four supply missions from the Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) cargo spacecraft, 13 different astronauts, and 14 spacewalks, in which 48 nickel-hydrogen batteries were replaced by 24 lithium-ion batteries...
"It used to be that it wasn't a big deal to toss stuff from ISS because very few satellites were below it [at altitudes below 250 miles (400 km)], " Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, explained in an email. "That's not so true any more with a bunch of cubesats and with recently launched Starlinks during orbit raising. So I have concerns."
To which he added: "I don't immediately see what else they could have done except fly a whole extra HTV mission just to get rid of it."
According to the European Space Agency, around 34,000 objects larger than 3.9 inches (10 cm) are currently in orbit around Earth, in addition to millions of tinier objects, such as tools and bits of spacecraft. The volume of objects in space, both functional and non-functional, is steadily increasing, prompting concerns of potential collisions and even more orbital debris.
A NASA representative told Gizmodo their ballistics officers "indicate no threat" of the pallet smashing into other space objects, but added "this item, like all, will be tracked by U.S. Space Command."
Gizmodo shares a photo of the pallet orbiting 265 miles (427 km) above Chile. And they add that this chain of events starte in 2011 when NASA decided to switch the Space Station from nickel-hydrogen batteries to lithium-ion batteries. This effort required four supply missions from the Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) cargo spacecraft, 13 different astronauts, and 14 spacewalks, in which 48 nickel-hydrogen batteries were replaced by 24 lithium-ion batteries...
"It used to be that it wasn't a big deal to toss stuff from ISS because very few satellites were below it [at altitudes below 250 miles (400 km)], " Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, explained in an email. "That's not so true any more with a bunch of cubesats and with recently launched Starlinks during orbit raising. So I have concerns."
To which he added: "I don't immediately see what else they could have done except fly a whole extra HTV mission just to get rid of it."
According to the European Space Agency, around 34,000 objects larger than 3.9 inches (10 cm) are currently in orbit around Earth, in addition to millions of tinier objects, such as tools and bits of spacecraft. The volume of objects in space, both functional and non-functional, is steadily increasing, prompting concerns of potential collisions and even more orbital debris.
A NASA representative told Gizmodo their ballistics officers "indicate no threat" of the pallet smashing into other space objects, but added "this item, like all, will be tracked by U.S. Space Command."
Harmless? (Score:4, Interesting)
So, if I burned "2.9 tons of nickel-hydrogen batteries" in my back yard, would that also be "harmless?"
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Not a Skylab since no large parts that could survive reentry. Skylab's chunks that reached ground were tanks and a hatch.
Re:Harmless? (Score:5, Funny)
Send nickel back to Canada.
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Here's what... (Score:2)
The ISS is in orbit around the Earth and has solar power panels... that much is obvious to most, but what many forget is that half of each 90 minute loop around the Earth is in darkness (essentially, although things like orbital inclination mean it's not exactly half of the time). This means that for about 45 minutes of every 90 minute period the ISS cannot be solar powered. As a result, the ISS has very large solar arrays plus some massive battery packs. While in orbital day, the solar panels power the sta
No littering! (Score:3)
But it isn't in your backyard.
However, I still wonder how they can release it accurately enough to be sure just where it will move for such a long period of time. I'm willing to believe that they know it is built in such a way that no part will survive contact with the atmosphere, but until then it has a long time to be perturbed in orbit. If the arm isn't strong enough, then couldn't they attached some kind of little booster to drag it into the atmosphere more quickly?
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c/attached/have attached/
That'll larn me not to make a last-minute change. (And no, it won't. That and the weak eyes.)
Re:No littering! (Score:4, Interesting)
> then couldn't they attached some kind of little booster to drag it into the atmosphere more quickly?
SpaceX should sell them some bolt-on ion thrusters from the Starlink kit to accelerate the deorbiting. Space junk is worth getting rid of faster.
It used to be that 2.9 tons of nickel on-orbit was worth hanging on to for the inevitable spacedock, but with Starship being close to lifting 90 tons for $5M, that era is probably over.
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Okay, but now I think I should have made a joke about waiting for the 4th of July and using fireworks to deorbit it.
Re:No littering! (Score:5, Interesting)
I bet that they could have used a Dragon's trunk, as it's jettisoned during reentry.
Though it would probably take some planning as the extra mass that's not supposed to be there at that point would affect maneuvering, would require attachment points, etc.
Re: No littering! (Score:2)
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but with Starship being close to lifting 90 tons for $5M,
Starship is promising. But if they achieve $5m/launch, I'll come watch it in my fusion-powered flying car.
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You'll get a charge out of it.
Re:Harmless? (Score:5, Interesting)
There used to be a saying in civil engineering: Dilution is the solution to pollution.
That turned out not to *always* be true. Stuff that is not natural in environment can accumulate through biological and physical pathways. But nickel is a common trace element. And quite a bit comes from space. About fifty tons of meteoric material falls to Earth every day, and over the course of a year quite a bit of iron-nickel alloy burns up in the atmosphere.
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So, if I burned "2.9 tons of nickel-hydrogen batteries" in my back yard, would that also be "harmless?"
Nickel oxide is a carcinogen. But it is also relatively abundant in the earth's lithosphere and is naturally present in atmospheric dust.
So burning 2.9 tons in your backyard is not a good idea. But burning up 2.9 tons high in the atmosphere will make a negligible difference, and even that will be temporary.
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. "It is safely moving away from the station and will orbit Earth between two to four years before burning up harmlessly in the atmosphere,"
And yes, there's no harm to the methodology of elimination. But two to four years of tracking to assure obstacle avoidance where the only method to assure no collision is the device in the predicted collision path...how can that not create shit stains for control engineers?
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There are already tens of thousands of objects being tracked, so this is just one more.
There is no way to steer it, so there is nothing any control engineers can do at this point but hope for the best.
The debris problem is often overstated. Let's say this pallet is struck by a 100 gram bolt with a delta-v of 8 km/sec. That is enough to disintegrate it. But that doesn't mean 2.9 tons of debris in orbit. Energy would be lost in the disintegration. Most debris would be in suborbital trajectories, either d
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''There is no way to steer it, so there is nothing any control engineers can do at this point but hope for the best.''
Yea, I kinda didn't think they put propulsion and a guidance system on the battery pack, I was referring to the managed satellites. I may have fallen for the FUD regarding debris we've sent in orbit. I do believe it was a concern to some as somewhere sometime I read about a project to launch a satellite designed to catch debris. At the minimum I guess it's a good thing that it's a given it w
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And there's nickel-iron meteorites constantly raining down on Earth. A 2.9 t battery pack's a drop in the bucket.
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I think they mean harmless relative to the remaining ~460 tons of ISS which will some day eventually meet the same fate.
BANG!! Dam! Ivan i think (Score:2)
The Longer In Orbit The More Chance for Collisions (Score:2)
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Unless the rocket pack is fairly large and constructed for each item, I don't think it's easy to control accurately where it comes down. Maybe smaller objects can use a thin parasail to create drag and lesson their time in space. They'll burn up before reaching the ground.
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So why doesnt NASA commission a study of lightweight and inexpensive disposable deorbit systems that can be brought up on a cargo or crew flight, stored in a protected-but-vacuum compartment, then retrieved and strapped to random things that need to be jettisoned?
Think of a rocket motor with a controller, a very small fuel tank, a flat aluminum plank, and some cargo ratchet straps. Just enough to get instruction from Earth on center-of-mass, strap to the doomed cargo, push away either with the robotic arm
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> So why doesnt NASA commission a study of lightweight and inexpensive disposable deorbit systems
Because it's not the payload. It's the cost of getting them to orbit that is overwhelmingly prohibitive.
> inexpensive reaction wheel system
For orientation of a recover craft? Fine. That doesn't provide the orbital changes, the sources of energy to reach precisely the same potential energy and location of the objects in orbit to recover them. That requires energy, and time., especially time increased by att
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So instead of "down" why not "away"? Borrow a line from Pink Floyd and "set the controls for the heart of the sun."
Object is already past a good bit of the gravity it has to fight against. How much energy (and timing) would it take to get it moving in the right direction, not be caught by the moon's gravity, and keep on going? In towards the sun, let Venus, Mercury, or the Sun grab it and pull it down....
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I answered elsewhere. orbital velocity is only half of the energy needed for escspe from earth orbit, and roughly 1/10 the energy needed for spiraling into the Sun or out of the solar system. You basically need a really inexpensive, ideally free source of thrust to reach such alternative orbits. Fortunately, solar sails provide just that.
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I don't think it's easy to control accurately where it comes down
Same situation as now. It's just that the time in orbit would be reduced to months or weeks with the retro rocket. Where it hits will be just as much of a crap-shoot as letting it fly around for years.
Re: I don't understand (Score:1)
Just go back in time. Problem solved (Score:2)
The volume of objects in space, both functional and non-functional, is steadily increasing, prompting concerns of potential collisions and even more orbital debris.
Oh for a simpler time [youtube.com] when such things weren't an issue and conspiracy theory nuts were treated as such.
So... (Score:3)
Burn up harmlessly... (Score:2)
Starlink? (Score:1)
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"Gee, Mr. Musk, we're really sorry - we had NO IDEA that discarded battery pallet was going to take out every single one of your Starlink satellites!"
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"Gee, Mr. Musk, we're really sorry - we had NO IDEA that discarded battery pallet was going to take out every single one of your Starlink satellites!"
Hmmm. I wonder if the Battery pack was from Amazon?
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Hmmm. I wonder if the Battery pack was from Amazon?
As the batteries are around 9 years old and haven't yet burst into flames, I'm guessing the chances are low :P
In orbit, it's all weightless (Score:2)
Interestingly, the story in Accuweather credits UPI for the story, although Gizmod claims that George Dvorsky works for them. Accuweather claims it is from UPI but has a totally different headline
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That is an old and classic problem. The force of attraction between the object and the Earth is not gone: it's merely countered by orbital velocity. Whether objects in orbit are "weightless" is an old mathematical and philosophy problem often used to confuse students.
For most of us, "get over it, everyone knows what we meant" seems to cover the issue, and a few more precise people might insist on "more massive". I'm one of those, but such precision irritates some people.
Re: In orbit, it's all weightless (Score:2)
Some people may consider mass to be the same as weight, and they probably consider massive to be the same as extremely large, so it all works, although flawed.
It's the bigliest - any better?
How much energy required to send out of orbit? (Score:3)
I wonder how much energy would have been required to send the object into deep space, instead of dropping it into lower orbit... seems like that would have been a better strategy overall, if possible.
If they did it right, they could even have it eventually end up in the sun, and could piggyback canisters of human remains on the battery pack to pay for the extra steps and fuel required to send it towards the sun... it's not like it would have to get there anytime soon, the people are in no hurry.
I personally think we are well past the point where letting anyone just drop junk into orbit for several years, should be allowed at all.
Re:How much energy required to send out of orbit? (Score:4, Informative)
About as much as it cost to get it to orbit. LEO orbital velocity is approximately 18,000 mph, escape velocity is approximately 25,000 mph, but the energy involved is the square of the velocity.
"Ending up in the sun" would require eliminating the orbital velocity of Earth's orbit around the sun, approximately 66,000 mph. If you're dealing with such energies, it's much easier in theory to use solar sails to provide very light, but continuous, thrust for years.
"Dropping junk into orbit" is a real concern as private companies join the industry, rather than merely military sponsored national spacecraft. It does make the problem more urgent and encourages more active solutions, such as restricting the ejection of spacecraft and requiring registration for them, but that's a very awkward international legal effort NASA has been involved in for decades.
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, escape velocity is approximately 25,000 mph, but the energy involved is the square of the velocity...."Ending up in the sun" would require eliminating the orbital velocity of Earth's orbit around the sun, approximately 66,000 mph.
I figured it was something like that, so still quite a bit of power required... well, maybe if SpaceX does stops on the way to the moon they could collect garbage to throw out into space (or at least a moon dump).
I din't think you'd have to eliminate the orbital velocity of earth
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About as much as it cost to get it to orbit. LEO orbital velocity is approximately 18,000 mph, escape velocity is approximately 25,000 mph, but the energy involved is the square of the velocity.
"Ending up in the sun" would require eliminating the orbital velocity of Earth's orbit around the sun, approximately 66,000 mph. If you're dealing with such energies, it's much easier in theory to use solar sails to provide very light, but continuous, thrust for years.
"Dropping junk into orbit" is a real concern as private companies join the industry, rather than merely military sponsored national spacecraft. It does make the problem more urgent and encourages more active solutions, such as restricting the ejection of spacecraft and requiring registration for them, but that's a very awkward international legal effort NASA has been involved in for decades.
66000mph??? surely there is a vector where it’s already heading towards the sun and all we need to do is lift it up out of orbit not stop the object dead and reverse its direction? That would require a lot less energy.. I’m Probably wrong I’m no rocket scientist
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You have to get it out of Earth orbit first. If you take advantage of being in Earth orbit, you've accomplished half the task of escaping Earth orbit. But the energy infolved in solar orbit is _much, much_ larger. 66,000 mph solar orbit versus 13,000 for LEO, that's a factor of roughly (66 * 66 / 18 * 18) or roughly 13.4 times the energy, or roughly 3.6 times the delta V. It simply swamps any benefits from LEO, even if LEO benefits weren't expended irrecoverably getting out of Earth's local gravity well.
I'l
space shuttle O rings (Score:2)
Recycle. (Score:2)
Can't wait (Score:2)
The fraudulent statement NASA loves (Score:3)
Bringing things home from space is very expensive, so when NASA has something on orbit that it wants to discard, it likes to announce that the thing is being tossed overboard and will be "burning up harmlessly in the atmosphere".
This is a fraudulent statement - - but it's convenient.
NOTHING "burn[s] up harmlessly in the atmosphere" NASA itself knows full well that this is true; When space shuttle Columbia broke apart on reentry it was NOT converted into a harmless invisible vapor. Columbia broke up into a lot of pieces, but a vast amout of that debris made it all the way to the ground in very recognizable condition. Some of what made it through reentry was big heavy metal structures, but some was incredibly delicate stuff, like much of the still-on-the-reel video tape being shot by the crew on the flight deck during the early part of the reentry, which was found lying in the grass and was able to be re-spooled and played by NASA.
People should google for images of debris from the Columbia, and study them - you'll never again believe the fantasy that things turn to ash on reentry. Oh, and this is hardly unique to Columbia.
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They need a mass driver (Score:2)
Instead of ejecting it and hoping it deorbits, shoot bits of it directly at earth and get a free boost besides.
[Yeah, I realize you can't effectively shoot random crap out the back to accelerate, sigh.]