A European satellite had to be moved on Monday , July 9 , when a piece of music of space debris came a little too unaired for comfort , as picked up bySpace.com .
The CryoSat-2 spacecraft , which orbits at a height of 700 kilometers ( 435 miles ) and jaunt at 27,000 kilometers per hour ( 17,000 miles per hour ) , was found to have a 1 in 10,000 chance of colliding with an unknown object . So to debar it , engine driver elicit the thrusters on the satellite , ensuring it safely pass off 120 cadence ( 400 feet ) above the piece of debris .
“ Chances of collision went [ up to ] 1/10000 so a Collision Avoidance Manoeuvre ( CAM ) was performed ! ” ESA said on Twitter .
“ The unknown aim , or ' pursuer ' , was draw near from behind & below CryoSat , so spacecraft operations engineers send out the commands , CryoSat 2 fired its thruster , and it passed safely , 120 metres [ 390 foot ] over the unknown [ chaser ] . ”
ESA noted this was in reality the second time this year CryoSat-2 has had to avoid space debris , and the fourteenth CAM in totality since the satellite launch in 2010 . The squad will now do another tactical maneuver tomorrow to get the spacecraft back into its original arena .
CryoSat-2 is anEarth observance mission , tasked with measure the thickness of polar sea ice and monitoring change in the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica . The first planet in the program was lose during a launch nonstarter in 2005 , think CryoSat-2 is technically the first satellite in this mission , despite the name .
The spacecraft flies at an slant of 88 degrees from N to Dixie , which allows it to get a view of both poles . It uses an instrument call a Synthetic Aperture Interferometric Radar Altimeter ( SIRAL ) to valuate changes in the meth , bouncing microwave radar off the surface to observe difference as modest as1 centimeter(0.3 inches ) .
This latest incident highlights the problem of blank rubble , though . Last week a report from ESA found that almost20,000 piecesof space rubble were orb the planet , with a combine batch of 8,135 tons . This has forced engineers to look into room of transfer space junk .
One obvious elbow room is to secure satellite are aim to combust up in the standard atmosphere at the death of their life . But for those that lose impinging with the ground , or smaller pieces that ca n’t be assure , there are a act of remotion methods being tested including anet or harpoon .
Even the International Space Station ( ISS ) has to bemoved on occasionto avoid dust . And there have beena few collisionsbetween satellites and rubble in the past – although thankfully for CryoSat-2 , this was n’t one of them .
[ H / T : Space.com ]
