4 ms·
Design call for 'solar sentinel' mission
- chiph 9y agoI would guess that the particles of a mass ejection/flare are travelling sufficiently below the speed of light to make a warning system worth while. Also - How much debris has collected at Lagrange points over the millennia? Would it be a danger to a spacecraft parked there?
- ekimekim 9y agoL1, L2 and L3 are unstable - if you start to drift away even a tiny bit, that drift gets amplified over time. Staying at one of these points requires at least some station-keeping. L4 and L5, by contrast, are stable - even if you're not perfectly on the dot, you'll kind of "orbit" around the point if you're close enough. See [1]. These L4 and L5 points have, over the eons, collected many natural satellites (ie. asteroids) which are commonly called Trojans[2]. However, space is really, really big[3] so this isn't of too much concern to spacecraft. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_orbit#Tadpole_orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_orbit#Tadpole_orbit [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_(astronomy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_(astronomy) [3] Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams Edit: better link for [1]