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Yes, orbit decay having gone up by a factor of ~10 is indeed plummeting. You park things in low earth orbit so that they don't stay up forever and indeed come

Yes, orbit decay having gone up by a factor of ~10 is indeed plummeting. You park things in low earth orbit so that they don't stay up forever and indeed come down in reasonably small human-scale timeframes. Usually on the time scale of decades, sometimes more, sometimes less. If you designed a satellite to stay up for 10 years, it'll suddenly only be able to stay up a year, that's the scale of these things. Again it's an exponential thing, a seemingly small scale change in the slow part makes the fast part come quite a lot sooner.

GekkePrutser 4y ago
But this space 'weather' won't last forever right? Won't it go back to the old decay rate after this? So if it lasts a week, the lifetime will be reduced by 10 weeks? Still a lot but something you can cope with.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  There are events measured in minutes, hours, and years (or decades). We’re ramping up to a maximum which should happen in a few years but activity has been above predictions. We don’t understand the Sun dynamics all that well, but what’s happening now is a little weird beyond expectations and might be something that continues for years.
BitwiseFool 4y ago
I think the primary objection is that to the vast majority of people 'plummet' implies the satellite is suddenly and violently falling from the sky - it's the kind of word people would describe an airplane crash with. However unless the author happens to know a lot about orbital mechanics (or they've played Kerbal Space Program) they probably just picked an expressive word for the sake of a compelling article rather than something that would give a better picture to the layperson.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  It's a dumb objection. A mission manager was quoted using the word "diving". It isn't the journalist but the nitpicking commentors who are clueless. The headline accurately enough conveys what is happening and the article articulates it well. Orbital mechanics isn't intuitive enough for there to be perfect fit words given human experience, human timescales, "plummet" is fine.
  - BitwiseFool 4y ago
    I don't see why it is a dumb objection. Word choice is important, especially for journalists trying to convey information to the general public and even more so when it comes to headlines - as the majority of people won't read the article to understand the nuance. I genuinely think a decent number of people are going to envision a situation where satellites suddenly plunging out of orbit like they would in some big budget disaster movie. You are well within your right to tell them they are thinking of the word "plummeting" incorrectly but you are fighting an uphill battle. Technical and dictionary correctness has its place but to convey information properly people must consider the vernacular.
    - colechristensen 4y ago
      It’s dumb because it is based on the objector imagining what an uninformed reader would imagine and thinking that anything unlike mighty Thor smiting satellites out of the sky with lightning bolts would make the word “plummet” inappropriate. Satellites are falling relatively very fast compared to usual and some of them have or soon will burn up in atmosphere as a result, it’s a headline, not a half sentence expected to grant a degree in astrodynamics.
      - BitwiseFool 4y ago
        Likewise, why would you imagine that an uninformed reader would see the word "plummet" and understand that none of these satellites are in immediate danger of re-entry, that they will in-fact continue to stay aloft for several more months, and that in this context plummet means an orbit decaying an order of magnitude faster than expected? You are correct, one of the meanings of plummet is a rapid descent. These satellites are rapidly descending. You are correct. Again, though, word choice matters. Can you see where other commenters and I are coming from?
- orbital-decay 4y ago
  Sidenote: KSP is the worst way to build intuition in this particular case as it doesn't have any drag model in orbit, or even n-body simulation, so no orbital decay is possible there. Playing around with NASA's GMAT [0] or similar more comprehensive software is much more helpful to understand real-world orbital mechanics. [0] https://sourceforge.net/projects/gmat/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/gmat/
  - ericbarrett 4y ago
    There is a high-quality mod which adds n-body gravity: https://github.com/mockingbirdnest/Principia https://github.com/mockingbirdnest/Principia It will also add orbital perturbations/frozen orbits if you use Real Solar System: https://github.com/mockingbirdnest/Principia/blob/master/astronomy/sol_gravity_model.cfg https://github.com/mockingbirdnest/Principia/blob/master/ast... That said, to my knowledge there isn't yet a mod that adds high-altitude drag.
deleted 4y ago
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GekkePrutser 4y ago

But this space 'weather' won't last forever right? Won't it go back to the old decay rate after this? So if it lasts a week, the lifetime will be reduced by 10 weeks? Still a lot but something you can cope with.

colechristensen 4y ago
There are events measured in minutes, hours, and years (or decades). We’re ramping up to a maximum which should happen in a few years but activity has been above predictions. We don’t understand the Sun dynamics all that well, but what’s happening now is a little weird beyond expectations and might be something that continues for years.

BitwiseFool 4y ago

I think the primary objection is that to the vast majority of people 'plummet' implies the satellite is suddenly and violently falling from the sky - it's the kind of word people would describe an airplane crash with. However unless the author happens to know a lot about orbital mechanics (or they've played Kerbal Space Program) they probably just picked an expressive word for the sake of a compelling article rather than something that would give a better picture to the layperson.

colechristensen 4y ago
It's a dumb objection. A mission manager was quoted using the word "diving". It isn't the journalist but the nitpicking commentors who are clueless. The headline accurately enough conveys what is happening and the article articulates it well. Orbital mechanics isn't intuitive enough for there to be perfect fit words given human experience, human timescales, "plummet" is fine.
- BitwiseFool 4y ago
  I don't see why it is a dumb objection. Word choice is important, especially for journalists trying to convey information to the general public and even more so when it comes to headlines - as the majority of people won't read the article to understand the nuance. I genuinely think a decent number of people are going to envision a situation where satellites suddenly plunging out of orbit like they would in some big budget disaster movie. You are well within your right to tell them they are thinking of the word "plummeting" incorrectly but you are fighting an uphill battle. Technical and dictionary correctness has its place but to convey information properly people must consider the vernacular.
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    It’s dumb because it is based on the objector imagining what an uninformed reader would imagine and thinking that anything unlike mighty Thor smiting satellites out of the sky with lightning bolts would make the word “plummet” inappropriate. Satellites are falling relatively very fast compared to usual and some of them have or soon will burn up in atmosphere as a result, it’s a headline, not a half sentence expected to grant a degree in astrodynamics.
    - BitwiseFool 4y ago
      Likewise, why would you imagine that an uninformed reader would see the word "plummet" and understand that none of these satellites are in immediate danger of re-entry, that they will in-fact continue to stay aloft for several more months, and that in this context plummet means an orbit decaying an order of magnitude faster than expected? You are correct, one of the meanings of plummet is a rapid descent. These satellites are rapidly descending. You are correct. Again, though, word choice matters. Can you see where other commenters and I are coming from?
orbital-decay 4y ago
Sidenote: KSP is the worst way to build intuition in this particular case as it doesn't have any drag model in orbit, or even n-body simulation, so no orbital decay is possible there. Playing around with NASA's GMAT [0] or similar more comprehensive software is much more helpful to understand real-world orbital mechanics. [0] https://sourceforge.net/projects/gmat/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/gmat/
- ericbarrett 4y ago
  There is a high-quality mod which adds n-body gravity: https://github.com/mockingbirdnest/Principia https://github.com/mockingbirdnest/Principia It will also add orbital perturbations/frozen orbits if you use Real Solar System: https://github.com/mockingbirdnest/Principia/blob/master/astronomy/sol_gravity_model.cfg https://github.com/mockingbirdnest/Principia/blob/master/ast... That said, to my knowledge there isn't yet a mod that adds high-altitude drag.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]