ISS to maneuver around space junk leftover from Chinese anti-satellite test
Russian engineers will today fire engines on a Progress freighter docked to ISS to guarantee that a piece of debris left over from a 2007 Chinese military anti-satellite test does not hit the station.
The object the space station will dodge is called 35114 in NASA’s catalog of space objects, and is also identified at 1999-025DKS, a piece of debris from a Chinese anti-satellite weapons test in 2007. Originally part of a Chinese weather satellite, the debris resulted from an in-orbit missile test performed by China. As part of that test, a kinetic-energy, suborbital missile was fired at a defunct Chinese weather satellite called Fengyun-1C (which stopped working in 2002), obliterating it into thousands of pieces.
The destroyed satellite was originally in a much higher orbit, but atmospheric drag has pulled the debris closer to Earth over the years and ultimately into the flight path of the space station. The two objects’ closest approach is estimated to occur on Nov. 12, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at Harvard who tracks and catalogs objects in space. McDowell tweeted on Tuesday that his calculations show that this will be the 29th space station debris avoidance maneuver, and the third related to the 2007 Chinese anti-satellite test.
The maneuver will take place prior to the arrival of Endurance, carrying four astronauts.
While the anti-sat test initially produced about 3,500 pieces of debris, that number has dropped in the past fourteen years to about 2,700 pieces as the orbits of these objects slowly decay. The test was also another example of China’s willingness to break the Outer Space Treaty. As a signatory China is required to control every object it puts into orbit in order to prevent collisions. Instead, it performed a military test that created debris in the thousands, in orbits that threaten ISS.
We shall get another demonstration of China’s contempt for treaties in the next few months, when it launches two more large modules to its space station and the large core stage of the rocket comes crashing down somewhere on Earth, out of control.
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Russian engineers will today fire engines on a Progress freighter docked to ISS to guarantee that a piece of debris left over from a 2007 Chinese military anti-satellite test does not hit the station.
The object the space station will dodge is called 35114 in NASA’s catalog of space objects, and is also identified at 1999-025DKS, a piece of debris from a Chinese anti-satellite weapons test in 2007. Originally part of a Chinese weather satellite, the debris resulted from an in-orbit missile test performed by China. As part of that test, a kinetic-energy, suborbital missile was fired at a defunct Chinese weather satellite called Fengyun-1C (which stopped working in 2002), obliterating it into thousands of pieces.
The destroyed satellite was originally in a much higher orbit, but atmospheric drag has pulled the debris closer to Earth over the years and ultimately into the flight path of the space station. The two objects’ closest approach is estimated to occur on Nov. 12, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at Harvard who tracks and catalogs objects in space. McDowell tweeted on Tuesday that his calculations show that this will be the 29th space station debris avoidance maneuver, and the third related to the 2007 Chinese anti-satellite test.
The maneuver will take place prior to the arrival of Endurance, carrying four astronauts.
While the anti-sat test initially produced about 3,500 pieces of debris, that number has dropped in the past fourteen years to about 2,700 pieces as the orbits of these objects slowly decay. The test was also another example of China’s willingness to break the Outer Space Treaty. As a signatory China is required to control every object it puts into orbit in order to prevent collisions. Instead, it performed a military test that created debris in the thousands, in orbits that threaten ISS.
We shall get another demonstration of China’s contempt for treaties in the next few months, when it launches two more large modules to its space station and the large core stage of the rocket comes crashing down somewhere on Earth, out of control.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
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Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Space in general is getting crowded with debris. If we want a space-faring civilization, we’re going to *have* to come up with ways to deal with all the unavoidable debris of operations in orbit, or we’ll eventually get walled in by this spinning buzzsaw of junk.
Stuff above ~500km decays very slowly (centuries) to not at all.
A lot of this you just can’t avoid. (ASAT test debris is more on the avoidable side.) Paint flecks, explosive bolt fragments, debris from micrometeorites hitting things.
Right now, I’m mostly imagining developing large ground-based laser installations to vaporize small objects. It seems a bit Rube-Goldberg to send a rocket up after every bolt in it’s own individual orbit.
Are they sure they want to fire progress freighter engines? You know, they’ll have to turn them off again.
Maybe Starship with an aerogel maw as a basking shark to stay up there for years. Briz-M was a big offender.
MadRocketSci
I remembered the claims about the life of Vanguard 1’s life span back when I was a kid, so decided to check on my memory
“Vanguard 1 launched on 17 March 1958 at 12:15:41 UT from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral Florida. At 12:26:21, the third stage of the launch vehicle injected Vanguard 1 into a 654 x 3969 km, 134.27 minute orbit inclined at 34.25 degrees. Original estimates had the orbit lasting for 2000 years, but it was discovered that solar radiation pressure and atmospheric drag during high levels of solar activity produced significant perturbations in the perigee height of the satellite, which caused a significant decrease in its expected lifetime to only about 240 years. ”
So maybe “Stuff above ~500km decays very slowly (centuries) to not at all.” needs to be looked at. There’s a whole order of magnitude between 2000 years (which I remembered) and 240.