What Space Junk is Doing - Printable Version +- Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum (https://www.scivillage.com) +-- Forum: Culture (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-49.html) +--- Forum: Astronautics (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-136.html) +--- Thread: What Space Junk is Doing (/thread-9203.html)

What Space Junk is Doing - Yazata - Oct 14, 2020 Leo Labs says "We are monitoring a very high risk conjunction between two large defunct objects in LEO. Multiple data points show miss distance <25m and Pc between 1% and 20%. Combined mass of both objects is ~2,800kg." Projected to pass within 80 feet of each other with a collision probability of 1-20%. Predicted time Oct 16 00:56UTC. Predicted place over the Antarctic peninsula south of Argentina, Chile and the Falklands. The two "large defunct objects" threatening to collide in low Earth orbit are reported to be a Soviet Parus-64 satellite launched in 1989 and the third stage of a Chinese Long March 4c rocket launched in 2009. https://twitter.com/LeoLabs_Space/status/1316147305125490694 Image below from LEO Labs. I don't think that it's quite this bad https://www.leolabs.space/ I'm in Menlo Park all the time. LeoLabs is right down the street from SRI International, which isn't surprising since they spun off of SRI in 2016. Lots of extraordinary things spin out of SRI, which is kind of legendary in silicon valley. RE: What Space Junk is Doing - Zinjanthropos - Oct 14, 2020 That image is scary. Going to need deflector shields on spacecraft soon. Searched google and didn’t find many articles about anyone working on developing shields. One mention of laser device from 2017. If someone is developing one then I would think it hush-hush. Read one article claiming we are 50 years from that technology. Maybe there’s a business in going to space as a junk collector. RE: What Space Junk is Doing - Yazata - May 29, 2021 Canada's robot arm on the International Space Station took a licking but kept on ticking https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/iss/news.asp#20210528 Canadian Space Agency photo