Monday, February 16, 2009
Website: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/40841/title/Two_satellites_collide_in_Earth_orbit Date of publication: Thursday, February 12th, 2009
Publication: Science News
Author: Ron Cowen
The article is about two satellites, a functioning device belonging to the US and a nonoperating Russian instrument, colliding with each other at Earth orbit about 800 kilometers over Siberia on February 10, creating a swarm of some 600 chunks of debris. The name of the U.S. satellite was an Iridium 33, a common telecommunications spacecraft and the Russian device was a Kosmos 2251. The crush destroyed both of the satellites, which had orbits about 90 degrees apart relative to Earth. However, this was not the only crush that had happened. For example, in 2005, a U.S. rocket body collided with the third stage of a Chinese launch vehicle. But there was something different about the two crushes. The one that is about a U.S. rocket body colliding with the Chinese launch vehicle only generate very little amount of debris while the most recent one generated a lot more debris. From the article, it can be pointed out that although satellites can help us with many things, these very satellites could also pose us with problems. Lets take the recent collide of the two satellites as examples. What if the impact of the colliding is so strong that some of the debris is somehow brought down to Earth due to Earth's gravity? And what if the incident of the colliding satellites cost some kind of nation disagreement that may lead to war? Therefore in the end, satellites may not be as helpful as one would think of it.
(-------Done by: Eric Tan--------Class: 3 Sincerity------- Index no.23-------Article of Week 7)
¶ 5:15 PM End of post .
(-------Done by: Eric Tan--------Class: 3 Sincerity------- Index no.23-------Article of Week 7)
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