The mysterious breakdown of the Yunhai 1-02 satellite in March has probably been resolved. The discarded remains of an ancient Russian rocket appear to have crashed into the Chinese satellite, in what is a disastrous sign of things to come into our increasingly disordered Earth orbit.
On March 22, 2021, the 18th Space Control Squadron of the United States Space Force released a surprise tweet announcing the rupture of Yunhai 1-02: a Chinese military satellite launched in September 2019. The rupture had occurred four days earlier and it was not immediately known why this satellite, less than two years old, would have of suddenly experiencing a calamitous malfunction. In its tweet, the Space Force squadron said its “analysis is underway” and that it will track the 21 newly created fragments.
Such things are not without precedent. Satellites are destroyed in orbit, although it happens very rarely. In 2016, for example, that of Japan Hitomi satellite removed from control due to human error and outlandish software; the satellite rotated uncontrollably, causing it to rupture. It’s scary, a similar scenario could have been played on the International Space Station a few weeks ago, when Russia’s Nauka module began fire its thrusters shortly after docking.
Another possibility is that the Yunhai 1-02 satellite was deliberately shot down. China does exactly that in 2007 with an anti-satellite weapon (ASAT), which fired a missing weather satellite. The incident created hundreds of pieces and considerable international distress. India did something similar in 2019: an incident this also resulted in a dangerous field of debris in low Earth orbit.
G / O Media may receive a commission
A collision with space junk could explain the demise of Yunhai 1-02 and, again, there is also a precedent for such scenarios. In 2009, the communications satellite Iridium 33 crashed into Kosmos-2251, a missing Russian military communications satellite. NASA described the incident was the “most serious accidental fragmentation recorded,” as the collision produced more than 1,800 pieces of rubble over 10 cm.
Some astute studies by Jonathan McDowell, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, suggest that something similar happened at Yunhai 1-02, in which a piece of space debris crashed into the Chinese satellite. While scanning through the Space-Track.org catalog (which contains data from the 18th Space Control Squadron), McDowell noticed a strange note about the 1996-051Q orbital object (48078). The rubble object was described as “colliding with a satellite.”
“This is a new type of comment entry: I haven’t seen any comments for any other satellites before,” McDowell wrote in tweet published on Sunday, August 15th. Looking deeper, the astrophysicist identified the rune object as a remnant of a Russian Rocket Zenit-2, who delivered the file Tselina-2 electronic intelligence satellite in orbit in 1996.
An obvious candidate for the affected satellite was Yunhai-1-02, which turned out to be the case. A quick analysis of the data showed that Yunhai 1-02 and Russian space debris passed less than 1 km apart on March 18, and “exactly when 18SPCS reports that Yunhai broke down.” , McDowell he tweeted. To which he added: “37 trash items have been cataloged so far; there are likely to be more.” He describes the incident as the “first major confirmed orbital collision in a decade,” referring to the aforementioned devastation of 2009. Despite the collision, Yunhai 1-02, although no longer in use, continues to do so. orbital adjustments, suggesting that the collision was not entirely catastrophic, dit McDowell.
I contacted McDowell for more information about the Russian offensive space junk, the nature of the collision, and what should happen next.
The size of the 48078 wreckage object is not known, but it is probably between 5 and 30 inches wide, McDowell said. He explained that a collision in space involving a small object of this size will damage a satellite, “but will not completely destroy it.” Small objects appear more and more in orbit, “so we expect more incidents like this, and in fact we’ve seen about one a year.”
I’ve covered a few upcoming calls in the last few years, including one incident with two missing satellites: NASA-Netherlands infrared astronomical satellite (IRAS) and the GGSE-4 satellite of the United States Naval Research Laboratory, which was launched in the late 1960s. And in June, a wandering piece of space junk drilled a hole at Canadarm2, a robotic arm currently in service on the ISS.
McDowell said “the problem of space debris” is real “and as the number of satellites increases, we should expect many more as well as a growing number of rarer but more debris events. serious “. The Space Force will continue to monitor and catalog the debris that emerged from this event, but McDowell says we may never get official confirmation of this apparent collision. As for Yunhai’s unexpected 1-02 moves, “he may just keep track of the mistakes,” he said.
An awkward amount of space debris surrounds the Earth. European Space Agency estimates to suggest There are currently 900,000 objects between 1 and 10 cm in Earth orbit and 34,000 objects over 10 cm.
One of the main concerns is that the waste could trigger a Kessler syndrome, which resembles a snowball that gets bigger and bigger as it falls into maintenance. Annoyingly, the debris caused by this latest collision could impact other objects in space, resulting in an even larger field of debris. A hypothetical waterfall could possibly destroy the remains of satellites very bad and making low Earth orbit inaccessible. The time has come for us to improve regular space i clean our trash.