Space Fence To Defend Astronauts, Satellites Against Orbital Debris
The International Space Station and the space shuttle Discovery almost had to dodge some deadly space debris yesterday. Again. NASA is not installing any lasers soon, but the US Air Force is moving forward on their own object defence plan.
The USAF is working with various companies to develop a system that will allow to track the more than 600,000 pieces of space debris that are orbiting the planet. It may seem like a small number compared to the immensity of space, but the fact is that things are getting quite hairy up there. Especially after last February, when two communication satellites—a Russian Cosmo and an American Iridium—collided at 113,000km/h, 790 kilometres above Siberia.
The system is called the Space Situation Awareness, or Space Fence, and will consist of three networked football field-sized S-band radars distributed all across the world. The radars will track every single dangerous piece of debris orbiting the planet, keeping it in a continuously updated database. If there is any collision danger, the alert will break, and the astronauts will live to see another day in their shiny white space suits.
Unfortunately, the $US2 billion system won’t be operational till 2015.
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
@outerfringe
How would you propose to remove space debris traveling at thousand of kilometers per hour. Also, even if there is a way, the space junk eventually just burns up in our atmosphere, so removing it is unnecessary.
Um – knowing where it IS necessary if it has a chance of hitting other satellites or manned space vehicles such as the station or the shuttle…
The shuttle and station can adjust their orbits to prevent collision if given enough time. This technology will let NASA know more accurately if there will be a collision.
What happened last February between the Russian Cosmo and the American Iridium was scary indeed. Space Fence is a brilliant idea.