SpaceX Starlink Satellite Suffers Mysterious 'Anomaly' In Orbit (scientificamerican.com) 71
A Starlink satellite broke apart in orbit after suffering an unexplained "anomaly," apparently due to an "internal energetic source" rather than a collision. "The incident appears to have created some debris, with fragments likely to fall to Earth over the next few weeks," reports Scientific American. From the report: The satellite lost communication at about 560 kilometers above Earth, Starlink said. While the statement from Starlink, which is a subsidiary of Musk's rocket company SpaceX, merely noted that investigations are ongoing, LeoLabs said its radar observations of the event indicated an "internal energetic source" as the likely cause rather than a collision.
The incident underscores the potential hazards of the increasingly large numbers of satellites and other spacecraft in low-Earth orbit -- some 10,000 Starlinks are currently in orbit and counting. Starlink's statement said that "the event poses no new risk" to the International Space Station or to the upcoming launch of NASA's Artemis II mission, targeted for April 1.
The incident underscores the potential hazards of the increasingly large numbers of satellites and other spacecraft in low-Earth orbit -- some 10,000 Starlinks are currently in orbit and counting. Starlink's statement said that "the event poses no new risk" to the International Space Station or to the upcoming launch of NASA's Artemis II mission, targeted for April 1.
Here it comes (Score:3, Interesting)
Might this be patient zero for kessler syndrome?
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Some researchers do think we are actually pretty close to a kessler event from musks increasingly rampant space polution.
With that said, if it happens, it wont be long term. The LEO orbit they take means the sky will mostly clear up in well under a decade with most of the debris having deorbited in around 5 years.
I wont even speculate on the sort of havok Elon musks fantastical and unlikely space datacenters would create.
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Re:Here it comes (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah. In particular:
LEO FTW. Kessler Syndrome is primarily a risk if you put too much stuff with too poor of an end-of-life disposal rate in GEO. End-of-life without proper disposal rates have declined exponentially since Kessler Syndrome was first proposed (manufacturers both understand the importance more, and do a better job, of decreasing the rate of failures before deorbit - in the past, sometimes there wasn't even attempts to dispose of a craft at end-of-life). And now we're increasingly putting stuff in LEO, where debris falls out of orbit relatively quickly. It's not impossible in LEO, esp. with higher LEO orbits - but it's much more difficult.
Or to put it another way: fragments can't build up to hit other things if they're gone after just a couple weeks.
And this trend is likely to continue - a lower percentage of premature failures, and decreasing altitudes / reentry times. Concerning ever-decreasing altitudes, we've already been doing this via use of ion engines to provide more reboost (with mission lifespans designed for only several years before running out of propellant, instead of decades like the giant GEO ones), but there's an increasing interest in "sky skimming" [bbc.com] satellites that function in a way somewhat reminiscent of a ramjet - instead of krypton or xenon as the propellant for an ion engine, the sparse atmospheric air itself is the propellant, so the craft can in effect fly indefinitely until it fails, wherein it quite rapidly enters the denser atmosphere and burns up.
Re: Here it comes (Score:2)
"Some researchers do think" == "What follows is some stupid shit I just made up"
Do you have a citation that proves this equivalence? Or is this just something that some researches think? Wait ... none of them think this, do they? Try to behave will you?
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Some researchers do think we are actually pretty close to a kessler event from musks increasingly rampant space polution.
With that said, if it happens, it wont be long term. The LEO orbit they take means the sky will mostly clear up in well under a decade with most of the debris having deorbited in around 5 years.
I wont even speculate on the sort of havok Elon musks fantastical and unlikely space datacenters would create.
The results of the inevitable Kessler event on debris orbiting shells won't be completely predictable. Angle of strike, relative velocity of striking objects.
Some debris might take more time to de-orbit. let's not forget that Elmo isn't the only one contributing to the coming fireworks. Even without a Kessler event, it's going to get interesting navigating through LEO.
And orbiting data centers? From a strategic POV, I would encourage adversarial countries to put their entire countries data in LEO. All
Re: Here it comes (Score:4, Interesting)
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its Betteridge's Law of Headlines, not Betteridge's Law of any Question Whatsoever.
Re: Betteridge says "no" (Score:2)
It was just a single line below the headline so I'll allow it
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LEO is only a mere range of 100 miles from Earth's surface up to 1200 miles. So plenty of "space" beyond that but the LEO range can indeed fill up.
Re:Here it comes (Score:4, Informative)
Starlink is pretty low in orbit, so that may be a mitigating factor. Now, something higher up would be a problem, especially geosync sats.
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Starlink is pretty low in orbit, so that may be a mitigating factor. Now, something higher up would be a problem, especially geosync sats.
Good to know it's not really a problem. I wonder why those stupid researchers think it might be a pretty big problem?
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The region where Starlink satellites orbit, and many other of these massive constellations live, will clear itself out after a year or two, after which we can start over. But besides light pollution problem, Starlink's biggest problem is air pollution. We don't know what the long term effect of thousands of satellites burning up in the atmosphere is. This is quite concerning. These satellites are contaminating our upper atmosphere at rates we've never experienced before.
In the orbits above this region, K
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Compared to 44 tons of outer space junk hitting atmosphere each day, Musk's contribution is pitiful. Besides it all burns up anyway.
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Oh wow. The burning is where the pollution comes from! Natural bodies burning up in the atmosphere typically don't contain aluminum. Satellites do. And in fact we can measure an increase in aluminum particles and compounds in the upper atmosphere since starlink satellites have been regularly do-orbited. We have no idea what the long-term affect will be. I've heard atmospheric scientists call this one of the largest uncontrolled experiments in air pollution we've ever done as a species. Surely you agre
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Couldn't possibly be any worse then the experiment we are conducting with burning fossil fuels.
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There is no "Kessler event". You're imagining some shit like the movie Gravity, but that's not Kessler Syndrome. It's just good graphics.
Kessler Syndrome is merely the state of increasing orbital debris from ongoing impacts being greater than that reduced by atmospheric drag.
By some measures, we're already well within a Kessler Syndrome. Station Keeping sats, or sats that can otherwise dodge debris are just fine.
To quote an AC quoting a wise man,
As a wise man once said, "Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."
Some kind of hypothetical futu
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Maybe an anti-satellite missile test.
But probably just a bog standard bit of debris hitting it.
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They said it's internal rather than a collision, so probably a failed COPV would be my guess.
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Maybe Elmo uploaded some of Grok to it and it decided it couldn't take life as a sat any longer; so it took itself out of existence just to make the pain go away.
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Cool. And ya, that's almost certainly what it was. I assumed they were using some kind of monopropellant and was going to point the finger that way.
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Or a supply chain attack!
Prove you compromised one bird! Then you say can do stuff to some unknown quantity of the others, not like anyone can go check. They have to either let you blackmail them or call your bluff.
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Lifetime vs Orbital Height Ballistic Coefficient m/(Cd*A) = 166.67 kg/m^2
mean lifetime @ 400 km initial height is 110 days, maximum is 7 years
Re:Here it comes (Score:4, Informative)
No. One of the benefits of the orbit for Starlink is that it is well within the drag of the earth's atmosphere. That's one of the reason these satellites have only a 5 year life time anyway, without any propulsion they drop into the atmosphere and burn up.
These particulates will be short lived, and even if they take out all satellites in their orbit in a chain reaction, the impact will be at most a couple of years.
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Not the end of the world in terms of human access to space, but it would be doubleplus ungood for SpaceX. The lawsuits would be astronomical, not to mention the knock on effect of regulation of the industry in future. It would affect Ukraine and doubtless a lot of other things.
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Over blown and over hyped. Turns out gravity is 'really' good at bringing things down that have no way to keep up their own momentum.
Re:Here it comes (Score:4, Insightful)
People forget that the primary concerns about Kessler Syndrome were about geosynchronous orbit, which used to be where all the most important satellites went (many of course still go there, but not the megaconstellations). It takes a long, long time for debris to leave GEO. But LEO is a very different beast.
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People forget that the primary concerns about Kessler Syndrome were about geosynchronous orbit, which used to be where all the most important satellites went (many of course still go there, but not the megaconstellations). It takes a long, long time for debris to leave GEO. But LEO is a very different beast.
It's almost like the orbital shells will clear up in a day or two, and internet service won't be interrupted at all. In fact, we ought to purposely make satellites run into each other, for entertainment. 8^)
Yes, Geosynchronous Kessler would be a real tragedy. Yes, lower orbital shells will tend to have the resulting debris de-orbit more quickly.
But lost in all of this is the fact that if people are getting their pR0n from Starlink or the upcoming competitors, even a wildly optimistic 1 year downtime wi
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You're confusing the importance of avoiding Kessler syndrome in LEO with the difficulty of causing Kessler syndrome. GEO debris can potentially remain there for millions of years before interactions between the gravitational pull of the Sun, Earth, and Moon sufficiently perturb it. LEO debris remains for weeks to months. You have to have many orders of magnitude more debris in LEO to trigger Kessler Syndrome, where the rate of collisions exceeds the rate of debris loss.
The fact that a LEO Kessler Syndrom
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I don't think low earth orbits can generate an actual Kessler syndrome, because thing in low earth orbit tend to fall out of orbit in a few years. The real problem happens higher up where there's essentially no friction.
Probably... (Score:2)
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An oldie but goodie [youtu.be].
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Lol, I was thinking of this [youtube.com] instead ;)
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Well,
he took the term "satellite phone" literally.
In space, no one can hear you RUD. (Score:3)
A Starlink satellite broke apart in orbit after suffering an unexplained "anomaly," apparently due to an "internal energetic source" rather than a collision.
SpaceX seems to have a lot of euphemisms for "exploded". :-)
Andromeda Strain (Score:2)
I've seen this movie before...
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Fiction is a poor guide to reality, and the Andromeda Strain is worse than many. (Because it hides fallacies in techno-babble that looks vaguely reasonable.) Even Jurassic Park was better.
This is NOT a criticism of fiction. But the purpose of fiction is to consider plausible human reactions in simulated environments. There's no requirement, and frequently no desire, that the simulated environments be realizable. (I like many stories that invoke magic...but the magic better not be the point.)
"Exploded". (Score:2)
"Simple, honest, direct language." - George Carlin
No! (Score:2)
No! It was aliens.
The invasion is about to start.
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But that would upset the stockholders and suits.
Internal ? Form radar ? (Score:2)
How would radar be able to distinguish between a tiny energetic mass impacting a tank on the satellite and an "internal energetic source" being the cause ?
Re:Internal ? Form radar ? (Score:4, Informative)
The trajectory of the debris would cleanly define the difference. If there is an internal source, it will be exploding in all directions equally. If there is an impact preceding it, then the debris will have a slight preference in accordance with the law of preservation of impulse-momentum.
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Thanks.
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That requires that you be able to measure the momentum of the individual pieces. Velocity is a lot easier to measure. "Indicated" is probably the correct term. It's a reasonable guess that most of the pieces are pieces of metal...but metallized plastic would probably reflect radar the same way.
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I am presuming from the display of the debris. If something from the outside hit the satellite the debris pattern would be more conical in shape. Whereas, debris from an explosion, such as in this case, would be more spherical. Debris would radiate out in all directions.
Which brings up another point. Assuming an explosion which radiates out in all directions, depending on the force of the explosion, some debris would go to a (slightly) higher orbit. Space may be big, but now there is another piece of sh
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If it's pushed higher (or lower) in the orbit, that makes the orbit more eccentric, and at the other end of the orbit it will be lower (or higher). It's the ones pushed ahead that will end up in a slightly higher orbit, but I thing still more eccentric. Every piece will have an orbit that passes through the "point of disassembly" once or twice per orbit. (Usually twice.)
Directed microwave attack? (Score:2)
That feels like it would do it. Or a L.A.Z.O.RRR.
If you can turn that into an Atari Missile Command type game, with Elon's face getting a little sadder with every detonation, I will play.
Elon's achievements include, making it easier to target and kill people and arbitrarily turning that off [wikipedia.org] when your life depends on it.
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Then ask yourself if that's actually funny.
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Postulate? I had to look that up. Thank you I didn't know I could.
Funny? No there is nothing funny about using the Internet to kill people.
Amusing that someone can upset Elon, yes. Arrogance should be challenged, keeps arrogance in check. Natural balance.
As to who would do it, Elon and the Trump administaration excel at making enemies. Take your pick, could you say that they are morally worse than those two factions?
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Have you had a good look at Western Civilization lately? One of US's latest achievements is killing 135 little girls in an Iranian school. I couldn't give two fucks about plunging the world into an oil related economic chaos, but you can add that to the achievements too.
Don't even bother responding with words like "war" and "collateral damage" , you'll shame yourself.
Whilst we're at it wtf is Western Civilization? American kids shooting each other a school? A democracy bought by an oligarchy?
Friend, you ar
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Not at all.
You've responded like a child that has played to many video games.
There are no civiisaltions that want to enslave me .
There are countries that want to protect their sovereignty as would yours.
These are big concepts I don't expect you to understand, peasant.
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And are you familiar with the stated goals and preferred means of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran? Are you aware of what their stated interests are? Have you fallen into the trap of Moral/Cultural relativism?
I realize that I have responded only with questions, but they are intended to give you the opportunity to justify your attitude.
What a beautiful word (Score:2)
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Would that be an explosion powerful enough to disassemble a satellite? I think it's more likely that a battery blew up. Those can be powerful.
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You've either got a low threshold for "blew up" or a funny definition of "electronic."
Deliberate (Score:2)
Why not deliberately crash your "project" into other satellites, yours designed to turn LEO (low Earth orbit) into an un-navigable morass of space junk, an orbital and space-deniable attack? What's it cost, less than $100k to launch a denial-of-space attack with a 1U cubesat?
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What would it use for shrapnel? Ball bearings? Razor blades? Ninja stars? Spark plugs?
April 1 (Score:1)
The Scientific American ceased to publish anything other than AGW doom articles years ago.
an "internal energetic source" (Score:2)
Put up large space stations. (Score:2)
Send ships up, and attach/remove from *there*, instead of a zillion small ones.
https://www.theguardian.com/sc... [theguardian.com]