What happens if a space telescope weighing more than a ton collides with a 10-pound experimental satellite about 600 miles above Pittsburgh?
“You probably wouldn’t see anything here at all,” National Weather Service meteorologist Lee Hendricks said.
The gloomy, overcast cloud cover is expected to continue through 6:39 p.m. Wednesday, when the two orbiting objects are expected to pass between 50 and 100 feet of each other, according to LeoLabs , a California tech firm that monitors satellite and spacecraft in orbit to prevent collisions.
Quite a lot has been going on:
What's up with a demolition derby in orbital space? | TheHill
For most of this period, satellites were the primary preserve of large governments, mainly because of their great cost/complexity and military implications. Although a few U.S. and European companies either manufactured or operated communications satellites, these were either closely regulated or actually controlled by governments.
Through the 1990s, communications and many other types of satellites were placed in a very high orbit of 23,000 miles directly above the equator, where they would orbit the Earth at the same speed the Earth itself was rotating. This "geostationary (GEO) orbit" would make any satellite appear to be stationary in the sky so it could serve as a suspended relay tower for TV, telephone, and data across the oceans and continents.
Full Page Reload
12,000 Satellites Orbiting Earth In The Next 6 Years! | wfmynews2.com
The Falcon 9 rocket took the satellites to space at approximately 9:06 this morning. The mission is part of a program aimed at putting thousands of satellites in low orbit in a network style web.
The lower orbit will allow internet service to reach all corners of the US and Canada through the satellites.
Space X has more than 20 missions like this planned through the end of the year with the goal of getting to a total somewhere between 600 and 800 of them by the end of the year.
While you're here, how about this:
A cubesat deployed a de-orbiting tether and now it's losing altitude 24 times faster than before
The Terminator Tape is a compact lightweight module—less than 1 kilogram—that attaches to CubeSats, NanoSats and Small MicroSats. It has a small footprint and its operation poses no risk to the operation of the satellite, according to Tethers Unlimited.
The tape can be deployed by command or by timer, and consists of a long, conductive tape with two optional solar cells. When deployed, it "generates neutral particle drag and passive electromagnetics drag to hasten the de-orbit," according to Tethers Unlimited's website.
U.K. Sails Out of EU's Orbit and Toward America's Embrace - WSJ
Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson is said to have a good relationship with President Trump. Photo: christian hartmann/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
* * *
LONDON—British governments have struggled since World War II to balance their skepticism and anxieties about European economic and political integration with their worries about excessive strategic dependence on the U.S.
Britain's departure from the European Union on Friday will mark the next stage of that struggle, one likely to push the country deeper into the arms of the U.S. The question for London is what kind of partner the U.S. will be in the age of Donald Trump.
Here's how robots could repair or dispose of broken satellites in orbit - The Verge
These days, building and launching your own satellite means creating a sophisticated piece of technology — and then flinging it into space where you'll never see it again. That means if anything breaks on the satellite, there's not much you can do to fix it.
"Once you launch a mission, as soon as it leaves the pad, it's never going to be touched again by human or robotic hands," Jonathan Goff, president and CEO of Altius Space Machines, tells The Verge . "Which means that if anything goes wrong and you can't fix it with a software update, you're out of luck. There's not much you can do."
There may be a hidden planet orbiting a nearby star
Besides the Sun, the nearest star to Earth is a big flaming orb known as Proxima Centauri. As far as we know, there's at least one planet orbiting the star, which astronomers have named Proxima Centauri b, but a new study suggests that the known exoplanet around the star might not be flying solo .
According to the study, which was published in Science Advances , a planet now known as Proxima Centauri c may also be hanging out around the star. Even more exciting, scientists think that the planet orbits its star at a distance of around one astronomical unit, which is the distance between the Earth and the Sun, suggesting that it may be temperate.
No comments:
Post a Comment