What Space Junk is Doing

[Yazata]

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...5125490694

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.

[Image: earth.png]

[Zinjanthropos]

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.

[Yazata]

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

[Image: nouvelles-20210528-canadarm2-collage-ssi-og.jpg]