Comments on: The Great Junkyard In The Sky

By: Jared Woodard

Jared Woodard — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:57:33 +0000

HEy,as long as my 3G network stays up long enough to check my google reader,I got no problem with all this “Space Debris”

Jared Woodard’s last blog post..Pure Genius

By: The Secret Life of Kat

The Secret Life of Kat — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 13:06:07 +0000

I love the technology but seeing my front yard and my car on Google street maps is a little weird.

At the same time I had so much fun the other day looking up my childhood home on Google. It was really cool to see that the house looks just the same…

By: Brad Ruggles

Brad Ruggles — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 23:38:14 +0000

Wow, I am learning so much from you guys. I have such smart readers.

By: Juli Jarvis

Juli Jarvis — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 23:17:20 +0000

Wow — That’s cool Ric! Thanks for sharing! And — I didn’t understand a thing you said! But it was fun playing with the NASA website. I didn’t understand much of what my daughter said either, and it’s too long to post here, but here’s part of it (which was a result of a discussion in her spacecraft design class): “Well it’s true there is a lot of space junk…but the majority of it is between 1-10cm in size, and consider the radius of the Earth as we know it compared to the radius 300-500 km above us…much bigger area. The US tracks about 19,000 piece of space junk on the order of 5-10cm in size (as well as actual spacecraft and satellites)..If there’s a potential for a collision with something that can change its position, like the ISS or another satellite, then they’ll move it out of the way (to a slightly different orbit) to avoid the collision. The collision of the satellites last week though was a very very unlikely event. The ellipsoid overlap between the two was very small, and the probability of the two being in the same place at the same time very low. The people who track these satellites and space debris have a constantly-updating list of potential collisions and their probabilities. The probability of those satellites colliding wasn’t even in the top 150 most likely collisions that day. In fact, the people tracking it knew they had lost a signal, but didn’t know it had collided until well after the event. The space station does have to move from time to time to avoid certain things, mainly if they have the potential to collide with a pressure vessel (crew compartments, oxygen) which could cause a massive and rapid leak.” She also said she doesn’t think the shuttles leave much (if anything) behind — occasionally a loose tool or glove that escapes from the equipment bay. Most of the debris up there was leftover from the first 30 years of space flight.

Juli Jarvis’s last blog post..Great Quotes — Two

By: Ric

Ric — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:57:06 +0000

sorry… last one. the link for my 2nd comment:

http://science.nasa.gov/Realtime/jtrack/3d/JTrack3d.html

Ric’s last blog post..Everybody Hurts

By: Ric

Ric — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:46:25 +0000

I used my calculator on the pc and the numbers I already know to calculate that. I worked for NASA for 10 years. Ric’s last blog post..Everybody Hurts

By: Ric

Ric — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:45:06 +0000

Here's a cool NASA site that charts and tracks 900 satellites. The brighter dots in the foreground are geostationary satellites. You can click on the dots to see what satellite it is. You can drag it around so that you're looking down on the Americas and click on the geostationary birds. you'll find DirectTV's sat above us among many others. Ric’s last blog post..Everybody Hurts

By: Brad Ruggles

Brad Ruggles — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:37:09 +0000

@Aaron – Yes! That would be awesome! Calling Superman now…

@Ric – Uhhh…wow. I wasn’t expecting quite as detailed or a scientific comment as that! Did you figure that all out on your own or copy it from a web site? Either way, I think you probably spent more time than I spent even writing this post!

By: Ric

Ric — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:26:24 +0000

The artist rendition of the space junk is intentionally exaggerated. "Objects in the picture appear much larger than reality" About 1000 times larger. Many of the satellites are in an equatorial geostationary orbit. Its easy to avoid bumping into them since they are lined up along the equator and they are orbiting at an altitude of 22,000+ miles. The low earth orbiting (like the Shuttle) is about 4,000 miles up. In the worst case scenario, if all satellites were low orbiting at 4000 miles then the circumferance of the imaginary globe these satellites would be sitting on would be a little over 260 million (about 50,000 miles). If each satellite were 20 feet long (which is generous) and we lined them up end to end we would have 12,000 * 20' => 240,000 foot space train. So that means we don't have quite enough junk to go 1/1000th of the way around globe. Put another way, to represent this entire train of satellites on the picture of this post, I'd have to draw a dot with the tip of a sharpie. And yes I love technology. duh huh? Ric’s last blog post..Everybody Hurts

By: Aaron

Aaron — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:19:15 +0000

Maybe Superman can come along, rope it all together like he did the nukes in IV, and fling it into the sun. Or not. Aaron’s last blog post..Classic Margarita