E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
NASA TV
Russian spacecraft stick up from their docking ports on the International Space Station during Saturday's encounter with a piece of space junk. Spacefliers took shelter in their Russian Soyuz lifeboats as a precaution.
The International Space Station's crew members took shelter in their Russian Soyuz lifeboats as a precaution during Saturday's totally harmless passage of a piece of space debris.
In a series of Twitter updates on Friday night, NASA said a hunk of junk from a Russian satellite was projected to fly past the space station at an estimated distance of 14.8 kilometers (9 miles), at around 2:38 a.m. ET Saturday. That was within the zone that required precautionary measures to be taken. The zone is called a "pizza box" because of its shape: 50 kilometers (30 miles) on a side, and 750 meters (a half-mile) above and below the plane of the station.
The appointed time came and went without incident. "Nichevo ... Nothing," one of the Russian cosmonauts said. The spacefliers had hoped to catch a glimpse of the object, but no visual sighting was reported.
NASA said the relatively small piece of debris was a leftover from the 2009 collision involving an Iridium telecommunications satellite and Russia's Cosmos 2251 military communications satellite. It was detected by radar on Friday, sparking the alert.
"Everything went by the book," NASA spokesman Rob Navias said after the all-clear was sounded. He said the station's controllers followed a "precautionary and conservative" approach by ordering the crew to take shelter.
The station currently has six crew members aboard: two Americans (Don Pettit and Dan Burbank), three Russians (Anton Shkaplerov, Anatoly Ivanishin and Oleg Kononenko) and Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers. The spacefliers were awakened a little more than an hour earlier than scheduled and put the station's control systems into standby mode. Then they took their places in the two Soyuz craft docked to the station and closed the hatches.
The crew members were prepared to descend back down to Earth if the piece of debris had collided with the 450-ton space station and dealt such a serious blow that the orbital outpost had to be abandoned. Instead, they merely reopened the hatches, returned the control systems to their regular settings and resumed a "normal and relaxing weekend," Navias said.
He said it was "serendipitous" that the precautionary measures were taken on the astronauts' day off, meaning that there would be "no impact to scientific research or any other crew work."
Not the first time, or the last
NASA issued a similar collision alert back in November, but called off the alert even before the astronauts' appointed time to get into the Soyuz space capsules. Last June, the crew actually did get into the Soyuz craft due to a collision threat, but the space junk whizzed past at a distance of 850 feet (260 meters). Astronauts took similar precautions in April 2009 and November 2008.
On other occasions, the space station has changed its orbital path slightly to eliminate the risk of collision with space debris. That's how NASA dealt with potential collision threats in January, involving debris from the Iridium satellite as well as from a Chinese satellite that was smashed up in 2007. But in order to use that option, the crew needs more than a day of advance warning.
Experts say there are more than 20,000 pieces of orbiting space junk more than 10 centimeters wide — that is, bigger than a softball. Lots more pieces are smaller, down to the size of a marble. "More than 500,000 pieces of orbital debris are tracked," NASA noted Friday night.
These bits of debris zip around the planet at speeds of 17,500 mph relative to Earth, and could cause serious damage if they were to hit the space station just wrong. NASA and the Defense Department keep close track of the bigger pieces, but the experts are worried that the space-debris problem will only get worse in the years ahead.
All sorts of schemes have been proposed to address the problem, including the idea of shooting water guns or lasers at pieces of space junk, or throwing nets over them. Last month, a Swiss venture announced that they were developing a "janitor satellite" to sweep up the trash. Do you have a better idea? Share it as a comment below.
Update for 11:05 p.m. ET March 23: I originally said the "pizza box" zone was 25 kilometers on each side, but what I meant to say was that it extends 25 kilometers out from the space station on each side. That means the total dimension of the box is 50 by 50 by 1.5 kilometers, with the station in the center, as NASA explains.
Update for 12:55 a.m. ET March 24: When the space station crew was awakened this morning, Mission Control told NASA astronaut Dan Burbank that the debris was projected to come within 9 miles, which is closer than the initial estimate of 14.3 miles. I updated the figures to reflect that, but even the updated estimates had a measure of uncertainty. That's why the spacefliers took shelter.
More about space debris:
- Junk-tracking 'Space Fence' passes key test
- To control space junk, remove 5 pieces a year
- Time running out to salvage doomed satellite
- Europe creating its own space-debris tracker
Last updated at 3 a.m. ET March 24.
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
Leave a Comment:
Just stick a long vacuum hose up there and suck down all the garbage. You tree huggers crack me up.
Would we be sucked up since the space is vacuum? Haha I guess not since gravity would still be holding down the air of the atmosphere. Interesting to think about.
How about picking up your own trash and quit dumping junk in space like we do in in the ocean? Government, this is not your personal place to trash up. If this were the air and water, the EPA would be screaming. How about each polluter be required to bring back their trash or pay such a fine, they would be compelled to clean up their act. Oh yea, I forgot. In space, no one can see or hear you while you dump your garbage. Can you imagine the headlines, International Spacestation was struck by a 500LB block of frozen poo. Analysys confirms it was human. However, additional funds are required for furthur study to deternine source.
Jerry 369642, i'm with you on the near miss being a hit as a near hit being a miss.? This is a fine kettle of fish we have here, over 20,000 pieces (so far) blazing across space at the approx. altitude of the space station. There is certainly a need for some type of janitorial services in our heavens, sounds like a Halaburton contract in the making?
See the previous post on the semantics at work here.
A "near miss" is something that misses, but got close.
"nearly missed" is a hit
"nearly hit" is a miss
No one uses the phrase "near hit" for a reason! (or a "far miss" for that matter!)
9 miles? Pussies! Bruce Willis would just fly around that junk and drill through that iron bitch.
create filters around the earth...
It's a good article, from this site I've spent a hour tracking info, all part of the learning curve. There is a lot of junk up there for sure. When you see a image of space debris, you wonder how they get though it all without a hit. It's a 24/7 heads up job to avoid it all.
This is probably a dumb question but I'm curious as to the shape of the zone in the article. It would seem to me that it would be cube shaped with equal distances around it. If I've missed seeing this discussed already I apologize. I looked and didn't see any reference to that.
http://www.space.com/6625-space-junk-earth-rise-experts.html -- Try this and see space junk all around this planet
How about orbiters that have remote (steering and firing) control capability and present a sturdy wedge in their front. You put some of these in orbit, steer them towards dangerous space junk; built-in guidance on the orbiter takes over when it 'sees' the junk you are steering it towards; it rams the junk with its sturdy wedge; the junk is either deflected down (upon which it is disintegrated by entry) or deflected up (upon which momentum might carry it into outer space or into an orbit that rapidly decays, again burning it up). Your guidance returns the orbiter to the correct path after each collision, since obviously, these collisions will have an effect on the orbiter's path, too. Provide this thing with enough fuel and intelligence to operate for a year or so; then, since its nose wedge might survive its eventual fall towards earth, when it's ready to drop, send it to the moon.
The "Space Junk"...Don't Like Russians..Too Funny..
multi-billion dollar space station nearly damaged by remnants of abandoned satellites; the world sure knows to to protect it's investments.
People used to think that throwing garbage in the ocean was ok. Out of sight, out of mind. Looks like the same thing happened in orbit. Didn't people in the space programs consider that space junk might become a problem in the future? I don't think we should try to shoot at the junk out there. That would only make the pieces smaller, not get rid of them. Even a grain of sand moving at orbital speeds can cause immense damage. At least larger pieces would be easier to remove.
I love the creativity of people ideas to gather up space junk.
It would be interesting to find out if the scrap value on earth is greater than the expense of collecting it and returning to earth.
As it stands the shuttle was the only vehicle capable of performing this feat, and we all know what happened to that.
All this talk reminds me of that cheesy old TV show "Salvage One" where a quirky old scrap dealer builds a rocket to collect all the Apollo moon landing equipment. I loved it as a kid.
I have a question. Not being to up on my space science, If you somehow "threw" a net over the debris how would you know where and when it would return to earth?
I have a question. If you "threw" a net over space debris how would you know where and when it would return to earth?
Physics and math
See now if they had issued space suits with pockets to put those butts and wrappers in until they could be properly disposed of they would not have such a messy area, a training issue.
Soooo, It's predictable. You can "calculate" where you want it to go. Really, I'm interested but not physics and math oriented.
I think you could calculate fairly well how they will fly while in orbit since you know their velocity, position, and gravitational forces acting upon them.
If you try to get them to fly back into the atmosphere it would be nearly impossible to control the fall as the air would cause them to "tumble" and then there will be effect such as wind making it hard to predict where they'll fall. That said if the coming into the orbit over a large ocean, it might be safe to just let them fall- I'm not sure. I also don't know how quickly they would burn but since they are made of metal alloys and other high tech materials they might have high melting and burning temperatures.
If they don't have working GPS systems on them you could attach those but it will be an all over complicated and expensive process. Additionally there is sooo much space junk over 20,000 so it seems economically unfeasible unless there is a great idea on how to do it efficiently.
Yo all of those out there that suggest to magnetize the junk to clooect it, most of this junk is made of aluminum alloys . Good luck trying to magnetize that. IT WON"T WORK!
I wonder how often space junk hits other space junk and then they both undergo orbital decay and maybe reenter the atmosphere.
I'd also be interested in some calculations on the probability of junk hitting other junk in space, as I see it space junk constitutes only a tiny volume, or area of sphere of orbitals around the earth.
I think creating something to catch the debris that could potentially be worse if it were to get loose is a bad idea (ie; net). If releasing water in space results in near instant desublimation, how would it slow a moving solid object? Obviously a series of explosions would just make the debris pieces smaller and harder to track. What about hitting them with a laser, slowing them and forcing them back down into the atmosphere to burn up or fall to earth? Would that be the same as militarizing space?
I think the premise of "Quark", an old short-lived scifi comedy from the '70s about a space junkman 'cleaning up' the cosmos might not be so silly after all.
It's a shame we've brought our shortsightedness and environmentally toxic attitudes to the final frontier....
Yes sir, We trashed Earth and now we trash Space. We are such an intelligent form of life. We are batting 1000, we screw up things, no matter where we go.
"What have YOU done today to help our planet?"
How about using gravity as a way to clean up the debris? Place an object or several, with significant mass and possibly magnetic, in a safe orbital path around the Earth. Kind of like how planets cleared their orbital path around the Sun. Probably wont do great with large objects but with smaller stuff.... The main idea is using gravity to clear. What kind of material to use and the shape should be the big discussion in order the capture the most without deflecting. The best orbital path and speed would be concluded by the NASA. Once the "Gravity Ball" was full or achieved a predetermined size it could be used as a scientific object like crashing it into certain comets, moons, planets, etc... for observation.
Like, say what, Nuts, like you know, "Gravity Ball" (Bull)?
@ Ad'M - Huh??
The source that I quoted didnt get too much into how the Martians looked; he only mentioned that they were skinny and said a few things about their life span and their height. Secondly, the said that Mars showed "signs" of civilization. Though I never heard him mention it, I think that he was refering to the ruins in the Cydonia and other regions of the planet. Of course this was way before the writings of Richard C. Hoagland, a former NASA insider.
I think what is most important to this discussion are the new scientific findings about Mars, and now, Mercury. Although he said that there was life on all of our planets, he said that there was civilization on only seven of them, and subsequently mentioned Mars and Mercury in particular, as being inhabited. You never could conceive of a planet so close to the Sun as Mercury as having not only life, but civilization. Yes, and it is public record; there is civilization on Mercury RIGHT NOW. Obviously, he was not refering to microbes, but physical beings with their own culture. Although we here on earth have our home above the surface, this is not necessarily the case for the other seven inhabited planets in our solar system.
Just wait until you hear about what he said about rain, hail, snow, and earthquake. He said that this is all caused by an actual living person. You may laugh, but this is only because you can't imagine this ability to be within the physiological and biological makeup of man. It's kind of like the Unified Feild Theory of Einstein: small things that happen on a subatomic level in one place has instantaneous effects somewhere else. At the least, this subatomic activity within this individual coupled with neurons and emotion manifest itself in huge dynamic weather patterns, the steering of the jet stream, and even earthquakes. Once again, this is NOT science fiction.