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Nice! LeoLabs is doing some very cool stuff. They're working on four additional radar installations for tracking space debris. Their current installations can

Nice! LeoLabs is doing some very cool stuff. They're working on four additional radar installations for tracking space debris. Their current installations can track objects down to about a 10 cm diameter, but with their new installations they'll theoretically be able to track objects as small as 2 cm. In general, current radar systems tend to be limited on the lower end to objects in the 5-10 cm range. Systems like LeoLabs’ and the US Air Force’s upcoming Marshall Islands-based Space Fence will improve coverage, but still won’t see the 128 million objects from 1 mm to 1 cm. For perspective, a collision with a 10 cm object will likely completely destroy a satellite, a 1 cm object will likely disable it, and a 1 mm object may disable a subsystem. At closing velocities around 10 km/s, the kinetic energy of even an untrackable chip of paint is greater than the destructive power of an equivalent mass of stationary TNT. Whipple shields around the ISS’s crewed areas are built to absorb impacts with objects of up to around 1 cm. For anything bigger, an avoidance maneuver is used (if we see it coming).

objectivetruth 6y ago
Thanks for the info! Do you know what the weird polyhedrons are over Alaska and New Zealand?
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  Prob their sensors' field of regard. Especially since the NZ and central USA ones look fence-y
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - leolabs_eng 6y ago
    Yes, that is exactly what they represent.
    - objectivetruth 6y ago
      Oh, wow, then that just changed my whole understanding of what you're doing! Very cool.
GekkePrutser 6y ago
Wow 2cm is still huge if it rams into the ISS at 10km/s. It's like a 20mm bullet with at least 5 times the speed of a gun round (not sure how fast guns are actually :) What are those 'whipple shields'? Are those the foil sheets that basically vaporise the object (and part of the shield) so it won't penetrate the inner hull? I assume they have better tracking than 2cm for the orbit the ISS is in? Does the ISS have its own radar warning? Though I guess if it sees it coming it's already too late for avoidance.
- Alupis 6y ago
  > It's like a 20mm bullet with at least 5 times the speed of a gun round (not sure how fast guns are actually :) For some perspective, 20mm is 0.787402 inches, so that would be approximately a .79 Caliber projectile. For comparison, a .50 BMG round exits the muzzle of a rifle anywhere between 2,895 ft/s up to 3,044 ft/s[1]. 3,044 ft/s == 927.81 m/s == 0.92781 km/s. So yes, this 20mm piece of space junk is travelling a lot faster than a bullet, and consequently would carry a lot more energy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.50_BMG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.50_BMG
- jccooper 6y ago
  > Are those the foil sheets that basically vaporise the object (and part of the shield) so it won't penetrate the inner hull? Yes. Orbital hypervelocity impacts basically vaporize immediately on hitting anything, so you can offset a thin material in front of what you want to protect and cause any incoming object to turn into a cone of many much smaller objects which are less likely to penetrate the main hull.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
tectonic 6y ago
If you're into this stuff, we write about it in Orbital Index pretty frequently: https://orbitalindex.com https://orbitalindex.com (Some of the paragraph I posted was excerpted from a recent issue.)

objectivetruth 6y ago

Thanks for the info! Do you know what the weird polyhedrons are over Alaska and New Zealand?

Rebelgecko 6y ago
Prob their sensors' field of regard. Especially since the NZ and central USA ones look fence-y
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- leolabs_eng 6y ago
  Yes, that is exactly what they represent.
  - objectivetruth 6y ago
    Oh, wow, then that just changed my whole understanding of what you're doing! Very cool.

GekkePrutser 6y ago

Wow 2cm is still huge if it rams into the ISS at 10km/s. It's like a 20mm bullet with at least 5 times the speed of a gun round (not sure how fast guns are actually :) What are those 'whipple shields'? Are those the foil sheets that basically vaporise the object (and part of the shield) so it won't penetrate the inner hull? I assume they have better tracking than 2cm for the orbit the ISS is in? Does the ISS have its own radar warning? Though I guess if it sees it coming it's already too late for avoidance.

Alupis 6y ago
> It's like a 20mm bullet with at least 5 times the speed of a gun round (not sure how fast guns are actually :) For some perspective, 20mm is 0.787402 inches, so that would be approximately a .79 Caliber projectile. For comparison, a .50 BMG round exits the muzzle of a rifle anywhere between 2,895 ft/s up to 3,044 ft/s[1]. 3,044 ft/s == 927.81 m/s == 0.92781 km/s. So yes, this 20mm piece of space junk is travelling a lot faster than a bullet, and consequently would carry a lot more energy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.50_BMG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.50_BMG
jccooper 6y ago
> Are those the foil sheets that basically vaporise the object (and part of the shield) so it won't penetrate the inner hull? Yes. Orbital hypervelocity impacts basically vaporize immediately on hitting anything, so you can offset a thin material in front of what you want to protect and cause any incoming object to turn into a cone of many much smaller objects which are less likely to penetrate the main hull.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

tectonic 6y ago

If you're into this stuff, we write about it in Orbital Index pretty frequently: https://orbitalindex.com https://orbitalindex.com (Some of the paragraph I posted was excerpted from a recent issue.)