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The reason quoted by the article for FCC dismissal was that they are too small to be tracked, and thus avoided. Is this a legitimate concern? Even with a thou

by bbarn 8y ago

The reason quoted by the article for FCC dismissal was that they are too small to be tracked, and thus avoided. Is this a legitimate concern? Even with a thousand up there, is there real concern for collisions with the amount of space involved? I know the "technically correct" answer must be yes, as there's some increase in chance, but what realistically is that chance?

raverbashing 8y ago
If you can put a satellite into orbit that's definitely NOT "too small to be tracked"
- antsar 8y ago
  These sattelites are tiny; presumably the concern was not totally unwarranted. However, as stated in TFA, the satellites turned out to be quite trackable. Live tracking: https://platform.leolabs.space/catalog/L19943 https://platform.leolabs.space/catalog/L19943
  - mirashii 8y ago
    Keep in mind that this is live tracking by a commercial company, where the US Government is more interested in whether it can be tracked by US Government systems. JSpOC has a variety of detection hardware, but much if it is quite dated at this point. It's quite likely that the object is too small to be tracked by JSpOC who coordinates Space Situational Awareness, and so it still may have posed problems.
    - antsar 8y ago
      Well, the article says: > the SpaceBees have shown themselves to be easily trackable by the Space Surveillance Network, as well as by LeoLabs, a California-based company that provides orbital data to commercial-satellite operators and others in an effort to prevent collisions. I'm not sure if "Space Surveillance Network" is the same thing as "Space Situational Awareness", but it does sound like the US Government is capable of tracking these things.
- cweagans 8y ago
  Do you have some evidence to support that assertion?
- unit91 8y ago
  Depends on the tracking mechanisms employed. For example, using radar, the object you're tracking must be larger than the wavelength of the radar being used. Also note there is a difference between focused "tracking" and "searching". Radar also suffers from atmospheric attenuation, so there's a tradeoff between frequency, power, wavelength, etc. I don't know what systems they're using to track LEO objects, but it's certainly within the realm of reasonable. A decent primer: http://faculty.nps.edu/jenn/Seminars/RadarFundamentals.pdf http://faculty.nps.edu/jenn/Seminars/RadarFundamentals.pdf
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Wrong. You can put anything into orbit, from a house to a bacteria. The ability to track an object is a function of its size and material composition. These days, you can easily make a functional satellite with scientific payload that's too small to be tracked. I'm going to guess here, but you might be thinking that orbits are permanent and space is empty, so once you observe the point of insertion, you can calculate object's position anywhere in the far future. This is very wrong. Orbits are unstable and decay with time, due to residual atmospheric drag, solar radiation, interactions with Earth's magnetic field, the irregularity of the Earth's shape itself, and other factors. All of these combine to the need for continuous active monitoring of space around the Earth, and recalculation of trajectories of existing satellites. A satellite needs to be trackable in order to be able to update its trajectory, as it changes naturally.
hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
The problem is real (as given by the example of the satellite collision mentioned in the article) and could eventually be devastating for the ability of humans to utilize LEO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
walrus01 8y ago
The problem is very real. It's not like the FCC's threshold for what is a sufficient size (in cubic cm of volume) is so huge, they're only asking for like a 1U cubesat or larger. The things that this company launched are TINY. It's also technologically possible that they could have met the requirements, with a special size exemption from the FCC, by putting a radar corner-cube retroreflector on each corner of their tiny satellites, thereby artificially increasing its ability to be detected by radar, but they chose not to.
noxToken 8y ago
A few weeks ago, a coworker asked about adding and additional library to parse some data. The current library is at EoL, and we've had to make a few in-house patches plug the holes. We don't currently have time to do a complete replace and refactor (though we're working it in the schedule). I was asked, "Why can't we just use them in tandem? Does it matter if we parse the data twice in this instance?" No. In this instance, it doesn't matter for this specific data to be parsed twice. The overhead would be minimal. But what if we stopped refactoring code and appended new feature onto existing code? What if we didn't bother to remove defunct API calls, and instead, we discard the old responses and just made new ones with new data? That's why we don't just launch satellites. 4 (I think it was 4) additional objects 10cm across won't have much of an affect. The problem is when everyone starts launching satellites of various sizes no matter if they can be tracked or not.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

by bbarn 8y ago

raverbashing 8y ago

If you can put a satellite into orbit that's definitely NOT "too small to be tracked"

antsar 8y ago
These sattelites are tiny; presumably the concern was not totally unwarranted. However, as stated in TFA, the satellites turned out to be quite trackable. Live tracking: https://platform.leolabs.space/catalog/L19943 https://platform.leolabs.space/catalog/L19943
- mirashii 8y ago
  Keep in mind that this is live tracking by a commercial company, where the US Government is more interested in whether it can be tracked by US Government systems. JSpOC has a variety of detection hardware, but much if it is quite dated at this point. It's quite likely that the object is too small to be tracked by JSpOC who coordinates Space Situational Awareness, and so it still may have posed problems.
  - antsar 8y ago
    Well, the article says: > the SpaceBees have shown themselves to be easily trackable by the Space Surveillance Network, as well as by LeoLabs, a California-based company that provides orbital data to commercial-satellite operators and others in an effort to prevent collisions. I'm not sure if "Space Surveillance Network" is the same thing as "Space Situational Awareness", but it does sound like the US Government is capable of tracking these things.
cweagans 8y ago
Do you have some evidence to support that assertion?
unit91 8y ago
Depends on the tracking mechanisms employed. For example, using radar, the object you're tracking must be larger than the wavelength of the radar being used. Also note there is a difference between focused "tracking" and "searching". Radar also suffers from atmospheric attenuation, so there's a tradeoff between frequency, power, wavelength, etc. I don't know what systems they're using to track LEO objects, but it's certainly within the realm of reasonable. A decent primer: http://faculty.nps.edu/jenn/Seminars/RadarFundamentals.pdf http://faculty.nps.edu/jenn/Seminars/RadarFundamentals.pdf
TeMPOraL 8y ago
Wrong. You can put anything into orbit, from a house to a bacteria. The ability to track an object is a function of its size and material composition. These days, you can easily make a functional satellite with scientific payload that's too small to be tracked. I'm going to guess here, but you might be thinking that orbits are permanent and space is empty, so once you observe the point of insertion, you can calculate object's position anywhere in the far future. This is very wrong. Orbits are unstable and decay with time, due to residual atmospheric drag, solar radiation, interactions with Earth's magnetic field, the irregularity of the Earth's shape itself, and other factors. All of these combine to the need for continuous active monitoring of space around the Earth, and recalculation of trajectories of existing satellites. A satellite needs to be trackable in order to be able to update its trajectory, as it changes naturally.

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago

The problem is real (as given by the example of the satellite collision mentioned in the article) and could eventually be devastating for the ability of humans to utilize LEO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

walrus01 8y ago

The problem is very real. It's not like the FCC's threshold for what is a sufficient size (in cubic cm of volume) is so huge, they're only asking for like a 1U cubesat or larger. The things that this company launched are TINY. It's also technologically possible that they could have met the requirements, with a special size exemption from the FCC, by putting a radar corner-cube retroreflector on each corner of their tiny satellites, thereby artificially increasing its ability to be detected by radar, but they chose not to.

noxToken 8y ago

A few weeks ago, a coworker asked about adding and additional library to parse some data. The current library is at EoL, and we've had to make a few in-house patches plug the holes. We don't currently have time to do a complete replace and refactor (though we're working it in the schedule). I was asked, "Why can't we just use them in tandem? Does it matter if we parse the data twice in this instance?" No. In this instance, it doesn't matter for this specific data to be parsed twice. The overhead would be minimal. But what if we stopped refactoring code and appended new feature onto existing code? What if we didn't bother to remove defunct API calls, and instead, we discard the old responses and just made new ones with new data? That's why we don't just launch satellites. 4 (I think it was 4) additional objects 10cm across won't have much of an affect. The problem is when everyone starts launching satellites of various sizes no matter if they can be tracked or not.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]