Yesterday I posted on my Polish blog a note about the collision in space of two satellites, the Russian one from the Kosmos family and the American one from the Iridium group. One of the readers of my blog has made a comment that I asked him to translate into English, as it seemed to me that it touches a little problem that we may have with this event. So, here it is:
As found in http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0902/11iridium/
„U.S. STRATCOM routinely tracks about 18,000 objects in space, including satellites and debris, that are 3.9 inches across or larger.”
From this quotation, I conclude there is a database containing information about position, velocity and direction of the motion of all such objects. As I could further read: „Tracking priority and "conjunction analysis" - identifying which objects may pose a threat to manned spacecraft - is the first priority.”
Other priority, as I suspect, is avoiding collisions by expensive orbital installations, like satellites.
Considering facts that:
satellites are guidable, at least those which are functional, there are available sufficient computing potential in order that US STRATCOM tracked any collision possibilities at least few days ahead, estimated maximum chance of collision of two satellites moving with speed 0,51 km per second making one turn around globe per day on a random, variable but perpendicular orbits between 450 and 850 km above Earth is like once in 483 mln years (I assumed satellite to be cubes with an edge of 10 meters). There no possibility for an accidental collision.
We can conclude then, there is a false information in cited article that is quite probable when contrasted with the calculated propability of an accidental collision.
So, if it wasn't an accident, what could it be?
1.Could it be purposive, hostile destruction of one satellite by another?
2.Or collision being an effect of some kind of experiment?
3.Sabotage by manipulation of data entered into system?
4.Satellites were destroyed in effect of an incident we weren't informed about?
Personally I consider last possibility as most probable, what is supported by additional information found at another source about existence of two clouds of debris as the effect of this incident.
As Ark pointed out, collision could be effect of investigation of some other phenomena performed at the same time by two teams, which caused destruction of satellites.
As found in http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0902/11iridium/
„U.S. STRATCOM routinely tracks about 18,000 objects in space, including satellites and debris, that are 3.9 inches across or larger.”
From this quotation, I conclude there is a database containing information about position, velocity and direction of the motion of all such objects. As I could further read: „Tracking priority and "conjunction analysis" - identifying which objects may pose a threat to manned spacecraft - is the first priority.”
Other priority, as I suspect, is avoiding collisions by expensive orbital installations, like satellites.
Considering facts that:
satellites are guidable, at least those which are functional, there are available sufficient computing potential in order that US STRATCOM tracked any collision possibilities at least few days ahead, estimated maximum chance of collision of two satellites moving with speed 0,51 km per second making one turn around globe per day on a random, variable but perpendicular orbits between 450 and 850 km above Earth is like once in 483 mln years (I assumed satellite to be cubes with an edge of 10 meters). There no possibility for an accidental collision.
We can conclude then, there is a false information in cited article that is quite probable when contrasted with the calculated propability of an accidental collision.
So, if it wasn't an accident, what could it be?
1.Could it be purposive, hostile destruction of one satellite by another?
2.Or collision being an effect of some kind of experiment?
3.Sabotage by manipulation of data entered into system?
4.Satellites were destroyed in effect of an incident we weren't informed about?
Personally I consider last possibility as most probable, what is supported by additional information found at another source about existence of two clouds of debris as the effect of this incident.
As Ark pointed out, collision could be effect of investigation of some other phenomena performed at the same time by two teams, which caused destruction of satellites.
