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Astronauts take shelter in Starliner, other spacecraft after satellite breakup
- belter 2y agohttps://x.com/Space_Station/status/1806162645424189945 https://x.com/Space_Station/status/1806162645424189945
- RaoulP 2y ago"Shortly after 9 p.m. EDT, @NASA instructed crews aboard the space station to shelter in their respective spacecraft as a standard precautionary measure after it was informed of a satellite break-up at an altitude near the station’s earlier Wednesday. Mission Control continued to monitor the path of the debris, and after about an hour, the crew was cleared to exit their spacecraft and the station resumed normal operations."
- sunk1st 2y agoWhat makes the one spacecraft safer than the other?
- houseofzeus 2y agoThe ability to evacuate in it.
- headcanon 2y agoIts not so much that as it is their escape pod if the station has a catastrophic failure.
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoThe specific answer to OP’s question is manoeuvring thrusters, a heat shield and a landing system.
- croddin 2y agoThey could emergency return to earth right away if needed.
- Dylan16807 2y agoSmaller.
- rolph 2y agothe assigned crew has been trained to operate it. the logistics [crew mass, crew capabilities] have been factored into S.O.P. of the mission.
- surfingdino 2y agoThickness of the walls.
- brookst 2y agoOne of them is a Boeing.
- ASalazarMX 2y agoJust great, even more risk of debris.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- solarpunk 2y agostarting to see symptoms of something that could lead to Kessler Syndrome
- Dylan16807 2y agoAt that altitude? I don't know. This debris should clear out in a few years, right?
- dotancohen 2y agoMaybe twenty years, after taking out the Starlink constellation and most other satellites below ~400 KM. I'm sure that we'd still risk unmanned launches to higher altitudes during this time, but manned launches would very likely be restricted, at least by risk-adverse NASA.
- WJW 2y agoA starlink satellite has a life expectancy of only about 5 years anyway, and that is WITH station keeping ion thrusters. Anything smaller than a starlink satellite will likely have an even shorter lifespan due to having worse mass vs surface area ratio because of the square cube law, and should be gone within a few years. Anything larger can easily be tracked with radars etc and should still be gone relatively quickly.
- dotancohen 2y agoYes, but we won't have use of the functionality that the Starlink satellites provide for the duration of the natural deorbits from ~400 KM.
- treyd 2y agoSmaller debris deorbits faster, Starlink is in VLEO.
- dotancohen 2y ago
- htrp 2y ago> The incident illustrates what NASA officials have been emphasizing about the Boeing Starliner spacecraft, which is more than three weeks into what was expected to be a 10-day Crew Flight Test mission. Starliner is on a test mission with two astronauts and is authorized to leave the ISS in case of emergency. (The other two crewed spacecraft docked to the ISS are a SpaceX Dragon carrying four astronauts, and a Russian Soyuz with three people on board.)
- tedd4u 2y ago>what NASA officials have been emphasizing Anyone understand specifically what this is referring to? I read it several times and I don't see a hint. Normally this phrase would be followed by an explanation like >this illustrates what Alice has been emphasizing -- that Bob has excellent OpSec
- auspiv 2y agoThe Boeing Starliner craft has had multiple issues (IIRC 5 separate thrusters not working and at least 2 separate helium leaks) since docking with the ISS. NASA continues to stress that Starliner is authorized to return astronauts to earth in the event of an emergency. NASA, at the same time, delayed the return of said Starliner indefinitely until they can analyze more test data. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/06/nasa-indefinitely-delays-return-of-starliner-to-review-propulsion-data/ https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/06/nasa-indefinitely-dela...
- abadpoli 2y agoI don’t see what that has to do with this story, though. Starliner’s issues have nothing to do with the breakup of a satellite nor do the issues affect Starliner’s usage as a shelter. This article and headline just reek of the author grasping at straws to try and shoehorn Starliner into this story. The headline could’ve easily said “shelter in Soyuz” and nothing would’ve changed about the actual story at hand.
- vondur 2y ago
- bewaretheirs 2y agoAccording to both US Space Command and LEO Labs, the satellite in question was a 6-ton non-functional Russian satellite known as "RESURS-P1": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurs-P_No.1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurs-P_No.1 https://twitter.com/LeoLabs_Space/status/1806140666222948679 https://twitter.com/LeoLabs_Space/status/1806140666222948679 https://www.spacecom.mil/Newsroom/News/Article-Display/Article/3819238/press-release-break-up-of-russian-owned-space-object/ https://www.spacecom.mil/Newsroom/News/Article-Display/Artic...
- happosai 2y agoAccording to astrophysist and space historian Jonathan McDowell, Resurs-P1 passed over Plesetsk, a test launch base for the Russian Nudol anti-satellite system around the time of its debirs-generating event.
- sjburt 2y agoNote that his tweets indicate that he does not believe it to be an ASAT test. https://x.com/planet4589/status/1806333953617334688 https://x.com/planet4589/status/1806333953617334688
- pbhjpbhj 2y ago"Another comment on Resurs-P1; the sat is 5600 kg. That's huge. It would be crazy and very bad of the Russians to use such a massive sat as an antisatellite target. Now it may be true that the Russian govt is indeed crazy and v. bad, but still, am leaning towards 'not ASAT'." is the whole tweet. If Putin were doing something stupid because he can, that would sound pretty in keeping to me.
- exabrial 2y agoThis is actually something that happens fairly regularly. Sometimes they even rotate the space station so the smallest frontal area is facing the debris cloud.
- belter 2y agoSounds stressful...Wake up, shower, dress, then have breakfast with your ISS colleagues, while keeping up with the latest edition of the Orbital Debris News! Orbital Debris Quarterly News: https://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/quarterly-news/pdfs/ODQNv28i2.pdf https://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/quarterly-news/pdfs/ODQNv... Nasa Orbital Debris Program: https://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/quarterly-news/# https://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/quarterly-news/#
- FireBeyond 2y agoSlightly tongue in cheek, but the astronauts on board are not going to be the ones doing the mission planning around debris checks - that will be coordinated from the ground.
- philipwhiuk 2y agoIt's not. Shelter actions are pretty rare.
- Oarch 2y ago"This happened, for example, after Russia deliberately destroyed a satellite in November 2021 as part of a surprise anti-satellite test that other countries (including the United States) condemned". Funny they singled out Russia. From Wikipedia: "...a few countries (China, India, Russia, and the United States) have successfully shot down their own satellites to demonstrate their ASAT capabilities in a show of force."
- dylan604 2y agothe "for example" is the bit in the first quoted sentence to make it weird. if the debris is directly from the most recent Russian "test", then it would be right to call it out.
- wil421 2y agoChina shot a satellite from the ground.[1] Sometime after the US destroyed a satellite from a Navy ship [2]. Before these times the US did it from an F-15.[3] [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_missile_test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_... [2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Burnt_Frost#:~:text=The%20launch%20occurred%20on%2021,and%20successfully%20completed%20its%20mission https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Burnt_Frost#:~:tex.... [3]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Solwind&diffonly=true https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Solwind&diffonl...
- nick12r55t1 2y agoThat ASM-135 is probably the coolest thing I've read about all week
- crubier 2y agoIt depends on the orbit of the targeted satellite. If all debris are going to be at low altitude, reentering quickly and not crossing busy orbits, it’s fine. If debris are going to cross highly congested orbits often and for a long time, it’s bad. IIRC the Russian test was pretty bad in that regard
- surfingdino 2y ago
- ikekkdcjkfke 2y agoWhat does it take to create a magnetic shield? Given unlimited rare earth metals and such
- belter 2y agoIf you would limit to debris up to 250 grams, and not forgetting they arrive at a speed of at least 10 to 15 km/s, you would need a magnetic field of 2 to 4 Tesla. That is more than inside an MRI machine. Not feasible....
- HanClinto 2y agoCould it at least be a partial shield to help slow things down? And maybe not directly on the station itself, but perhaps as a cloud of drone-ship defensive satellites to provide a defensive array around the space station -- almost like a fleet of smaller boats providing a perimeter around a larger aircraft carrier?
- philipwhiuk 2y agoWell done, you created a cloud of debris to hit the ISS instead of just a single fragment.
- HanClinto 2y agoEven if that's true, then wouldn't that mean that any impact is now distributed, and the severity of any individual impact is now mitigated? If any kinetic energy can be divided and distributed amongst multiple projectiles (rather than a single point), then doesn't that lessen its severity?
- capitainenemo 2y agoHow about just a sacrificial shield well in front of the station along its orbital path? and/or a weaker magnetic one, also further ahead (further ahead would allow for deflecting slightly at lower power surely).
- mihaaly 2y agoFrom only 9 days ago from HN: 'The missunderstood Kessler Syndrome' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40716235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40716235
- eagerpace 2y agoLots of comments about what a shield would need to look like to protect against this. That’s not the way to think about this in the very near future. The space station and nearly everything in space up until now, is designed with very small mass and tolerances because it’s so expensive to get there in the first place. As the cost of mass to orbit lowers by orders of magnitude in, likely, the next decade, we can begin seeing spacecraft that are far more durable, redundant and agile. They will have ample propellant to move out of the way and they will have life support systems and failure modes designed to withstand and allow for the repair of small impacts.
- maxerickson 2y agoOne wonders if we will then have lots of big robust space junk.
- relativ575 2y agoPerhaps. We'll also have big robust space junk removers
- joshstrange 2y agoI always like to bring up the anime Planetes [0] when this is mentioned. I enjoyed the show overall but the core concept (space debris removal) was/is the main pull for me. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes
- kylehotchkiss 2y agoHow much shielding exactly is needed to defend one item moving at 17,500mph vs another moving towards it at 17,500. I agree propellant will become increasingly valuable but durable against impact seems almost fleeting of a goal
- Aeolun 2y agoKind of curious that at those high speeds bigger might be better, since the impact is spread over a larger area, and energy scales only linearly with mass.
- javiramos 2y agoI recently learned about this company that is designing a satellite to remove debris from space: https://www.starfishspace.com/ https://www.starfishspace.com/