Iridium, Cosmos collision (APOD 2009 Feb 18)

[polaris]

Something occurred to me after watching the AGI animation of the debris caused by this collision: it's unlikely the debris will re-collide on the other end of the orbits (over Antarctica) because I doubt the orbits intersect there, too. But shouldn't all the debris re-collide over the Arctic, again and again and again?

[Jyrki]

But shouldn't all the debris re-collide over the Arctic, again and again and again?

To me this sounds unlikely in the extreme. The orbits of the various left over pieces of debris will meet again at the starting point, but as they started their respective journeys around the globe at slightly different velocities, at the point of intersection the timings will be off by random amounts. At something like 8 kilometers per second a small fraction of a second is enough to cause a miss.

This was a major 'Ouch'. Surely many a piece of junk now has an orbit that will cause that piece to eventually burn up in the atmosphere, but the random distributions means that together these pieces will wreak havoc in a range of altitudes.

Would it help to design the satellites with enough spare manouverability so that at the end of their careers they could be steered into a slowly descending orbit? Then we would be treated with the light show of an incoming man-made meteoroid. Then again some of these chunks are massive, might not burn up completely, and we wouldn't want sizable chunks to hit the surface either. Sizable in the sense that they cause damage to living beings and property upon impact - not in the climate changing sense of asteroid/comet impacts

I simply don't know enough about satellites to tell whether this could ever become feasible. Anyone?

Cheers,

Jyrki

[neufer]

Would it help to design the satellites with enough spare manouverability so that at the end of their careers they could be steered into a slowly descending orbit? Then we would be treated with the light show of an incoming man-made meteoroid. Then again some of these chunks are massive, might not burn up completely, and we wouldn't want sizable chunks to hit the surface either. Sizable in the sense that they cause damage to living beings and property upon impact - not in the climate changing sense of asteroid/comet impacts

------------------------------------------------------------
<<Duck and Cover!!!
Very early on the morning of January 22, 1997, Lottie Williams,
a resident of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was walking for exercise in a park
near her home. She saw a "big bright light, like a fire" in the sky.
"It was coming over the park and as it approached us it got bigger.
All the colors that you see that come from fire, all those colors were
there." A few minutes later, Williams felt a gentle tap on her shoulder.
On the ground, she found a light piece of charred metal, about the
size of her hand. After some investigation, Williams confirmed
that the metal fragment came from a rocket that had been used
to put a satellite into orbit for the U.S. Air Force in 1996.>>
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I simply don't know enough about satellites to tell whether this could ever become feasible. Anyone?

The U.S., for one, tries to do this and was even planning to do this with the Hubble until they decided to keep it going one more time.

<<In order to mitigate the generation of additional space debris, a number of measures have been proposed:

Taking satellites out of orbit operational life could be facilitated with a "terminator tether," an electrodynamic tether that is rolled out, and slows down the spacecraft. In cases when a direct (and controlled) de-orbit would require too much fuel, a satellite can also be brought to an orbit where atmospheric drag would cause it to de-orbit after some years. Such a maneuver was successfully performed with the French Spot-1 satellite, bringing its time to atmospheric reentry down from a projected 200 years to about 16 years.

In orbital altitudes where it would not be economically feasible to de-orbit a satellite, such as in the geostationary ring, the ageing satellites are brought to a graveyard orbit where no operational satellites are present.

Proposals have been made for ways to "sweep" space debris back into Earth's atmosphere, including automated tugs, laser brooms to vaporize or nudge particles into rapidly-decaying orbits, or huge aerogel blobs to absorb impacting junk and eventually fall out of orbit with them trapped inside. However, most current efforts are being devoted to prevention of collisions by keeping track of the larger debris, and prevention of more debris.

Only one person has ever been recorded hit by manmade space debris: in 1997 an Oklahoma woman named Lottie Williams was hit in the shoulder by a 10 x 13 cm piece of blackened, woven metallic material that was later confirmed to be part of the fuel tank of a Delta II rocket which had launched a U.S. Air Force satellite in 1996. She was not injured.>>

[neufer]

Iridium 33 clearly had the right of way,
Cosmos 2251 should have yielded!

When two vessels are crossing, Port gives way to Starboard.

[orin stepanek]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090218.html

Some way to bring the space junk down would probably be advisable. Not much can be done about some of the junk up there but maybe future satellites could have a retro to take it out of orbit to a safe reentry location.

Orin

[Chris Peterson]

Some way to bring the space junk down would probably be advisable. Not much can be done about some of the junk up there but maybe future satellites could have a retro to take it out of orbit to a safe reentry location.

As previously noted, this is sometimes done now, and it isn't too difficult. However, the other side of this problem is in tracking. The current system for tracking what's up there apparently isn't accurate enough to allow for reliable collision predictions. Of course, we do have tracking systems that can do this, but they aren't designed to track everything. The main system that maintains the object catalog needs to be better.

Deorbiting is a slow process- you need to be able to avoid collisions both while satellites are operational, as well as during the deorbiting phase.

[PHN]

Its been a few years since I have done any investigation, but the statement that Irridium 33 was a US communications satelite is somewhat misleading. Here is some information I posted on a different forum:

The Iridium system was developed by Motorola in the early 90s. The name was chosen from the # of satellites which is the same as Iridium's number in the periodic table. Cell phones were in their youth then. The idea was to provide worldwide coverage, especially to the third world which has little or no land line coverage. Motorola spent $4B and the system didn't sell because the cost was $9 (in 90s $)per minute or so. Very few third world customers. Motorola gave up on it and sold it to a Saudi for $150M. Thus as far as I know, it is not a commercial US system anymore. I suspect that Bin Laden and the US military have been/are its biggest customers. At one time it was thought that the Saudi buying the system was one of the Bin Laden brothers, but I don't think that is true.
Before the sale of the system, Motorola asked for and received permission to deorbit the satellites. I think they may have deorbited some of them.
A number of the Iridium satellites were orbited by the Chinese using the technology given them by Clinton. They underbid the US orbiting industry.
The Iridium satellites produce predictable Iridium flares, sun reflections from the solar cells, which are visible along relatively narrow paths on the surface of the earth. They can be a up to a intensity of -8. Only last for a few seconds & you have to know where to look. http://www.heavens-above.com/ will lead you there.

[aristarchusinexile]

I'm glad I didn't throw money away on a GPS, because this is going to happen again. Planet earth is a garbage dump .. now space is too.

[Chris Peterson]

I'm glad I didn't throw money away on a GPS, because this is going to happen again. Planet earth is a garbage dump .. now space is too.

The world is massively dependent on GPS... it isn't going away, even if the satellites need frequent replacement. That said, the GPS satellites are not at risk, since they are in high orbits. The volume of spacecraft up there is low, there is little debris, and almost no possibility of collisions. And that's not likely to change. The problem is with satellites and debris in low Earth orbit.

So go ahead and get yourself a GPS. Wonderful on canoe trips <g>.

[zbvhs]

Where I worked, it was considered the responsibility of the satellite operators to avoid collisions - especially those with high-value vehicles. Our ground system had collision-avoidance software that was run periodically to assess the probability of collision with known objects tracked by NORAD. If necessary, we would move our vehicle to avoid problems. I know NASA does this with Space Station and Shuttle when it's on orbit.

Satellite designers should be required by international law to provide some sort of emergency deorbit capability. Rockets would be out since, more often than not, SV attitude can't be controlled when the vehicle goes completely dead. Some sort of passive system would be needed - unfurl a big solar sail maybe.

The alternative would be to go get the things and deorbit them using a manned vehicle. It would have to be manned because the target vehicle will likely be tumbling about some odd axis and the grappling vehicle would have to match the motion and then reach in and grab the target vehicle. Experienced pilots would be needed but the maneuver shouldn't be overly risky.

NASA would be a good candidate for this mission considering the huge investment they have in Space Station. It would have to be international in flavor since the U.S., Russia, and China all have things on orbit which, though dead, are still considered to be classified. The details could be worked, I'm sure. It's obvious something's going to have to be done soon.

[NowIsForever]

In the upper left of this APOD a caption states: Time (UTCG): 10 Feb 2009 16:55:38.

I searched the net for the meaning of UTCG and found nothing but a few references like the one above that referred to satellite navagation. Unfortunately, none of these sites indicated a definition of UTCG time. I presume that this is a time standard based upon UTC, yet I know not why there would be a need for a standard that differs from UTC to be used in satellite navagation. Would someone please enlighten me?

[Chris Peterson]

In the upper left of this APOD a caption states: Time (UTCG): 10 Feb 2009 16:55:38.

I searched the net for the meaning of UTCG and found nothing but a few references like the one above that referred to satellite navagation. Unfortunately, none of these sites indicated a definition of UTCG time. I presume that this is a time standard based upon UTC, yet I know not why there would be a need for a standard that differs from UTC to be used in satellite navagation. Would someone please enlighten me?

The "G" means "Gregorian", and I think that UTCG is just used when UTC is expressed in Gregorian date/time units. AFAIK there is no offset between the two.

[NoelC]

Gee NASA could just use our low-cost reusable launch-orbit-return system (the Shuttle)... Oh wait, they canceled that. And it wasn't low-cost.

The Air Force should step back up and do space stuff again.

-Noel

[apodman]

Iridium 33 clearly had the right of way, Cosmos 2251 should have yielded!
... When two vessels are crossing, Port gives way to Starboard.

The Air Force should step back up and do space stuff again.

Everyone knows starship crews have Naval ranks.

If another ship's bearing remains constant (if it stays over the same spot on your rail) as it gets larger, you are on a collision course. I'll bet neither of these satellites had a proper rail nor a trained navigator.

---

I'm on record defending the use of Wikipedia links for their convenience as long as the articles fairly represent substantiated information, whether or not they substantiate that information themselves. It's caveat emptor for the reader who must take Wiki expertise for what it is - varied and often unverified. But the Wiki article linked from the term "ablation cascade" in the APOD description is really weak. Whether there is no cascade, a cascade that dies out relatively quickly with minimal additional wreckage, a cascade that dies out eventually with moderate additional wreckage, or a cascade that destroys every satellite in orbit depends on a number of factors not even mentioned. And the author writes about satellites exploding instead of just being fragmented by collision; some may explode, but I expect the majority would not.

[neufer]

Everyone knows starship crews have Naval ranks.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Starfleet_ranks

If another ship's bearing remains constant (if it stays over the same spot on your rail) as it gets larger, you are on a collision course. I'll bet neither of these satellites had a proper rail nor a trained navigator.

Unlike, say, the Vanguard and Triomphant.

[codex]

I remember reading a few years back about a satellite that was about to be launched that carried a plutonium battery pack. The article stated that if the launch were to catastrophically fail, the battery's plutonium would be released into the air and that all life on earth would be destroyed. This was pre-APOD days, so I hadn't the wherewithal to ask anyone to confirm. My question here is; is this still a danger -with satellites crashing above our heads- that their lethal batteries and perhaps other dangerous payloads would be unleashed into the atmosphere?

[neufer]

I remember reading a few years back about a satellite that was about to be launched that carried a plutonium battery pack. The article stated that if the launch were to catastrophically fail, the battery's plutonium would be released into the air and that all life on earth would be destroyed. This was pre-APOD days, so I hadn't the wherewithal to ask anyone to confirm. My question here is; is this still a danger -with satellites crashing above our heads- that their lethal batteries and perhaps other dangerous payloads would be unleashed into the atmosphere?

We're pretty much OK so long as they don't crash land near a terrorist:

<<A radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG, RITEG) is an electrical generator which obtains its power from radioactive decay. In such a device, the heat released by the decay of a suitable radioactive material is converted into electricity by the Seebeck effect using an array of thermocouples. RTGs can be considered as a type of battery and have been used as power sources in satellites, space probes and unmanned remote facilities, such as a series of lighthouses built by the former Soviet Union inside the Arctic Circle. RTGs are usually the most desirable power source for unmanned or unmaintained situations needing a few hundred watts or less of power for durations too long for fuel cells, batteries and generators to provide economically, and in places where solar cells are not viable.

RTGs may pose a minimal risk of radioactive contamination: if the container holding the fuel leaks, the radioactive material may contaminate the environment.

For spacecraft, the main concern is that if an accident were to occur during launch or a subsequent passage of a spacecraft close to Earth, harmful material could be released into the atmosphere; and their use in spacecraft and elsewhere has attracted controversy. However, this event is not considered likely with current RTG cask designs. For instance, the environmental impact study for the Cassini-Huygens probe launched in 1997 estimated the probability of contamination accidents at various stages in the mission. The probability of an accident occurring which caused radioactive release from one or more of its 3 RTGs (or from its 129 radioisotope heater units) during the first 3.5 minutes following launch was estimated at 1 in 1,400; the chances of a release later in the ascent into orbit were 1 in 476; after that the likelihood of an accidental release fell off sharply to less than 1 in a million. If an accident which had the potential to cause contamination occurred during the launch phases (such as the spacecraft failing to reach orbit), the probability of contamination actually being caused by the RTGs was estimated at about 1 in 10. In any event, the launch was successful and Cassini-Huygens reached Saturn.

The plutonium 238 used in these RTGs has a half-life of 87.74 years, in contrast to the 24,110 year half-life of plutonium 239 used in nuclear weapons and reactors. A consequence of the shorter half life is that plutonium 238 is about 275 times more radioactive than plutonium 239 (i.e. 17.3 Ci/g compared to 0.063 Ci/g). For instance, 3.6 kg of plutonium 238 undergoes the same number of radioactive decays per second as 1 tonne of plutonium 239. Since the morbidity of the two isotopes in terms of absorbed radioactivity is almost exactly the same, plutonium 238 is around 275 times more toxic by weight than plutonium 239.

The alpha radiation emitted by either isotope will not penetrate the skin, but it can irradiate internal organs if plutonium is inhaled or ingested. Particularly at risk is the skeleton, the surface of which is likely to absorb the isotope, and the liver, where the isotope will collect and become concentrated.

There have been six known accidents involving RTG-powered spacecraft. The first one was a launch failure on 21 April 1964 in which the U.S. Transit-5BN-3 navigation satellite failed to achieve orbit and burnt up on re-entry north of Madagascar. Its 17,000 Ci (630 TBq) plutonium metal fuel was injected into the atmosphere over the Southern Hemisphere where it burnt up, and traces of plutonium 238 were detected in the area a few months later. The second was the Nimbus B-1 weather satellite whose launch vehicle was deliberately destroyed shortly after launch on 21 May 1968 because of erratic trajectory. Launched from the Vandenberg Air Force Base, its SNAP-19 RTG containing relatively inert plutonium dioxide was recovered intact from the seabed in the Santa Barbara Channel five months later and no environmental contamination was detected.

Two more were failures of Soviet Cosmos missions containing RTG-powered lunar rovers in 1969, both of which released radioactivity as they burnt up. There were also five failures involving Soviet or Russian spacecraft which were carrying nuclear reactors rather than RTGs between 1973 and 1993 (see RORSAT).

The failure of the Apollo 13 mission in April 1970 meant that the Lunar Module reentered the atmosphere carrying an RTG and burnt up over Fiji. It carried a SNAP-27 RTG containing 44,500 curies (1,650 TBq) of plutonium dioxide which survived reentry into the Earth's atmosphere intact, as it was designed to do, the trajectory being arranged so that it would plunge into 6-9 kilometers of water in the Tonga trench in the Pacific Ocean. The absence of plutonium 238 contamination in atmospheric and seawater sampling confirmed the assumption that the cask is intact on the seabed. The cask is expected to contain the fuel for at least 10 half-lives (i.e. 870 years). The US Department of Energy has conducted seawater tests and determined that the graphite casing, which was designed to withstand reentry, is stable and no release of plutonium should occur. Subsequent investigations have found no increase in the natural background radiation in the area. The Apollo 13 accident represents an extreme scenario due to the high re-entry velocities of the craft returning from cislunar space. This accident has served to validate the design of later-generation RTGs as highly safe.

To minimize the risk of the radioactive material being released, the fuel is stored in individual modular units with their own heat shielding. They are surrounded by a layer of iridium metal and encased in high-strength graphite blocks. These two materials are corrosion and heat-resistant. Surrounding the graphite blocks is an aeroshell, designed to protect the entire assembly against the heat of reentering the earth's atmosphere. The plutonium fuel is also stored in a ceramic form that is heat-resistant, minimising the risk of vaporization and aerosolization. The ceramic is also highly insoluble.

The most recent accident involving a spacecraft RTG was the failure of the Russian Mars 96 probe launch on 16 November 1996. The two RTGs onboard carried in total 200 g of plutonium and are assumed to have survived reentry (as they were designed to do). They are thought to now lie somewhere in a northeast-southwest running oval 320 km long by 80 km wide which is centred 32 km east of Iquique, Chile.

Many Beta-M RTGs produced by the Soviet Union to power lighthouses and beacons have become orphaned sources of radiation. Several of these units have been illegally dismantled for scrap metal resulting in the complete exposure of the Sr-90 source, fallen into the ocean, or have defective shielding due to poor design or physical damage. The US Department of Defense cooperative threat reduction program has expressed concern that material from the Beta-M RTGs can be used by terrorists to construct a dirty bomb.>>

[aristarchusinexile]

I'm glad I didn't throw money away on a GPS, because this is going to happen again. Planet earth is a garbage dump .. now space is too.

The world is massively dependent on GPS... it isn't going away, even if the satellites need frequent replacement. That said, the GPS satellites are not at risk, since they are in high orbits. The volume of spacecraft up there is low, there is little debris, and almost no possibility of collisions. And that's not likely to change. The problem is with satellites and debris in low Earth orbit.

So go ahead and get yourself a GPS. Wonderful on canoe trips <g>.

Thanks for the assurance Chris, but I'll paddle with maps .. well, I'll paddle with paddles, but use maps to paddle by. Drop a map overboard and it'll float, for one thing .. use a map to start an emergency fire .. use a map overhead to prevent sun stroke .. use a map as an umbrella .. cook a map into soup if an emergency. Impress young ladies with map reading skills .. (We are right here, uh, I think ...) Etc.

[aristarchusinexile]

Unlike, say, the Vanguard and Triomphant.

Comforting that the world's existance is in the hands of such capable seamen.

You're a good one, Neuf.

[Czerno]

<http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090218.html>

This is not too reassuring is it ?

I'd like to know if this collision was predicted correctly, how much in advance, and whether the predictions (if any) were given for certain or carried probability estimations ? Did the actual event confirm the advanced calculations (again, if any)?

Thank you for our daily bread, uh, picture, which is also food for thought !

--
Czerno

[Chris Peterson]

I'd like to know if this collision was predicted correctly, how much in advance, and whether the predictions (if any) were given for certain or carried probability estimations ? Did the actual event confirm the advanced calculations (again, if any)?

It was not predicted, and apparently could not be economically predicted with the technology currently in place. It was reported that a post analysis showed a ~500 meter miss, with a several kilometer uncertainty. It was also reported that Iridium (which monitors for collisions) gets several hundred reports a week with similar results. That's far too many to make it practical to move the satellites- they would quickly run out of propellant.

I'm sure that some satellites are being tracked with great accuracy, and there's no doubt that things get moved around to avoid possible collisions. But there's no way right now to do that with everything in orbit.

[aristarchusinexile]

Ah yes, but what if the collision was not an accident?

[bystander]

Ah yes, but what if the collision was not an accident?

Why would anyone want to sabotage Kosmos 2251? It hadn't worked since 1995.

[neufer]

Ah yes, but what if the collision was not an accident?

Why would anyone want to sabotage Kosmos 2251? It hadn't worked since 1995.

But there were probably lots of astronomers who wished Cosmic harm towards Iridium 33:

The Iridium satellites produce predictable Iridium flares, sun reflections from the solar cells,
which are visible along relatively narrow paths on the surface of the earth.
They can be a up to a intensity of -8.

[bystander]

But there were probably lots of astronomers who wished Cosmic harm towards Iridium 33:

But only Iridium 33 was steerable. That would imply someone deliberately crashed it.