4 ms·
In summary, a rocket body and an old weather satellite want to have a nice big hug. At high speed. Producing a cloud of 4 million fragments. 400 of which will b
by undecisive 6y ago
In summary, a rocket body and an old weather satellite want to have a nice big hug. At high speed. Producing a cloud of 4 million fragments. 400 of which will bigger than 20cm.
Except that they'll probably miss (by about 10m). Probably.
Really interesting how much of this is statistical probabilities, and how much we can model about this. Right down to particle sizes.
And yet, I still have so many questions. Mostly involving the maths from https://what-if.xkcd.com/13/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/13/ and whether we could push either of them out of the way...
- scanny 6y agoI’m curious as to how they get those sizes and quantities! Too they have cad models of both objects or are they just taking the radar returns and material and making an estimate?
- bagels 6y agoFor well known objects like these, the mass and approximate size is known. You can Google them to find values even. The positional uncertainty and lack of data about attitude lead to modelling the objects as spheres as not so bad a choice. One algorithm that is sometimes used: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF03546397 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF03546397
- bagels 6y agoIt would probably take longer than the notice you might get of a potential collision (5-7 days)