South Korea: Numerous close calls between its lunar orbiter and others
A South Korean official has revealed that during the ongoing mission of its lunar orbiter Danuri it has had to act to avoid dozens of potential collisions with three other spacecraft.
In a presentation at the Secure World Foundation’s Summit for Space Sustainability here July 11, Soyoung Chung, senior researcher at the Korea Aerospace Research Institute’s (KARI’s) strategy and planning directorate, said her agency had received 40 “red alarms” of potential collisions among spacecraft orbiting the moon in the last 18 months.
The warnings primarily involve close approaches involving KARI’s Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter from India’s space agency ISRO, which are all in similar low orbits around the moon. The three agencies voluntarily share information about the orbits of their spacecraft using a NASA platform called MADCAP that generates collision warnings.
In addition, engineers had to institute a maneuver to avoid Japan’s SLIM lunar lander, and in that case the warning occurred only a day before the potential collision was to occur.
The official noted that at present there is no system to coordinate lunar orbits and spacecraft, as exists for Earth orbit. South Korea and Romania have proposed giving this power to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, which based on UN politics would likely be a very bad thing for the commercial space industry. I guarantee that UN agency would quickly favor government missions in its decision, and would also favor authoritarian governments over capitalist nations.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
A South Korean official has revealed that during the ongoing mission of its lunar orbiter Danuri it has had to act to avoid dozens of potential collisions with three other spacecraft.
In a presentation at the Secure World Foundation’s Summit for Space Sustainability here July 11, Soyoung Chung, senior researcher at the Korea Aerospace Research Institute’s (KARI’s) strategy and planning directorate, said her agency had received 40 “red alarms” of potential collisions among spacecraft orbiting the moon in the last 18 months.
The warnings primarily involve close approaches involving KARI’s Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter from India’s space agency ISRO, which are all in similar low orbits around the moon. The three agencies voluntarily share information about the orbits of their spacecraft using a NASA platform called MADCAP that generates collision warnings.
In addition, engineers had to institute a maneuver to avoid Japan’s SLIM lunar lander, and in that case the warning occurred only a day before the potential collision was to occur.
The official noted that at present there is no system to coordinate lunar orbits and spacecraft, as exists for Earth orbit. South Korea and Romania have proposed giving this power to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, which based on UN politics would likely be a very bad thing for the commercial space industry. I guarantee that UN agency would quickly favor government missions in its decision, and would also favor authoritarian governments over capitalist nations.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
This is a really big problem that needs to be fixed ASAP imho. The reason is there is no atmosphere on the moon so everything in orbit is going to stay in orbit, and as ever more missions target the moon this is soon going to be a really big problem. And just imagine the mess once there is a collision or two and we suddenly have a mess of random small object debris with no tracking infrastructure to know where they are!
At a minimum we need an agreement that any residual orbits be targeted to some pre-agreed “zones” with objects registered into a database as they enter it. But long term all lunar missions need to intentionally de-orbit any debris before this problem never really gets out of hand.
MDN: You are incorrect about your statement that everything in lunar orbit stays there. In fact, it is the opposite. Because of the mass concentrations inside the Moon, orbits are not stable and automatically decay with time. Nothing in orbit will stay in orbit, even more so than around Earth.
Not that I disagree with you main point. I just think it will be a big mistake to give this power to anyone in the UN.
We need *something*, but … more limited.
Something as simple as a multi-lateral agreement, at space agency level, to share information about vehicles in lunar space. Maybe that could be fleshed out a bit to voluntary agreements to adopt “best practices.” But none of that requires the UN or any formal organization. And I agree, the UN should not be involved in any space activity if we can possibly help it.
Scott Manley covered this topic, a couple of years ago, after a question about whether Apollo 11’s ascent module is still in lunar orbit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBHbLV7xEhc (11 minutes)