Breaking News: Two Satellites Collide In Orbit

Originally posted by TeslaandLyne
We know whats going on in orbit, yeah sure we do.

Looks like the old Russian satellite had move down in orbit.

From astronautix, these are the original orbital figures for cosmos 2251:
1993 June 16 - Cosmos 2251 - Program: Strela. Launch Site: Plesetsk. Launch Complex: LC132/1. Launch Vehicle: Kosmos 3. Mass: 900 kg (1,980 lb). Perigee: 778 km (483 mi). Apogee: 803 km (498 mi). Inclination: 74.00 deg. Period: 100.70 min.
Replaced Cosmos 2112.

That's about the same perigee and apogee it had at the time of the collision; the russian sat didn't move down.

[edit on 13-2-2009 by ngchunter]

You think NASA listen to all the comments about 'junk rings' and us being the litterbugs of the galaxy? It seems they may do...
www.nasa.gov...

The debris objects shown in the images are an artist's impression based on actual density data. However, the debris objects are shown at an exaggerated size to make them visible at the scale shown.

[edit on 13-2-2009 by and14263]

Duck and Cover there headed my way!!

Public Information Statement
Issued by NWS Jackson, KY

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PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE JACKSON KY
1145 PM EST FRI FEB 13 2009

...POSSIBLE SATELLITE DEBRIS FALLING ACROSS THE REGION...

The national weather service in jackson has received calls this evening from the public concerning possible explosions and...or earthquakes across the area. The federal aviation administration has reported to local law enforcement that these events are being caused by falling satellite debris. These pieces of debris have been causing sonic booms...resulting in the vibrations being felt by some residents...as well as flashes of light across the sky. The cloud of debris is likely the result of the recent in orbit collision of two satellites on tuesday...february 10th when kosmos 2251 crashed intoiridium 33.

www.crh.noaa.gov..

Mod Edit: New External Source Tags – Please Review This Link.



[edit on 14-2-2009 by sanctum]

reply to post by Kain01


Yep I had to verify your report.
have you heard any sonic booms or seen any meteor-like flashes?
good catch. and good luck

Peace

I forgot to post the link, my bad. I did hear some "booms", but it was cloudy outside here. It was on the local news stations. Several reports of flashes of light and sonic booms throughout KY. More in Southern KY.

Here is the link to the local news.

www.wkyt.com...

reply to post by ngchunter

'DODGEBALL' TO AVOID DEBRIS

Marine Corps General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a former head of the command that runs U.S. military space operations, said countries with satellites in space will have to play "dodgeball" for decades to avoid debris from the collision. It occurred about 485 miles

Iridium says in dark before orbital crash

That is in between Perigee: 778 km (483 mi) and Apogee: 803 km (498 mi).

So one Iridium was purposely moved into the Russian military
satellite to cause an incident.

Or things just happen.

Originally posted by TeslaandLyne
That is in between Perigee: 778 km (483 mi) and Apogee: 803 km (498 mi).

So one Iridium was purposely moved into the Russian military
satellite to cause an incident.

If it was between apogee and perigee then it was at an altitude that the satellite has at some point during its orbit. That's what we would expect if it hadn't moved to cause a collision.

Has anyone considered or suggested that a single person with extraordinary kinetic energy could have changed the obital paths of these two satellites?

reply to post by Skydancer

Enough kinetic energy to launch themselves into Earth orbit and give one of the satellites a push, eh?

Wonder whether they're still up there, and whether they've got enough kinetic energy left to effect a re-entry.

And what they're breathing...

reply to post by Astyanax


He obviously doesn't need to breathe. And he obviously has limitless kinetic energy... at least around our sun.

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

[edit on 16-2-2009 by ngchunter]

well I think that we humans need to clean up our junk that is floting around up in space and find a way that we could use the dead junk as meteral for of planet exploration. Why bring it up if we are arlready up, so we just find a way to reuse it that way we don't need to haul it up with up.

Update

The following found it's way to me in an email (no source as of yet).

Iridium 33

* *Owner:* Iridium LLC
* *Technical operator:* The Boeing Co. under
subcontract
* *Manufacturer: *Motorola, Inc.
* *Launched: *14 September 1997
* *Orbit:* near-circular 776 km x 86.4 degrees polar orbit

Iridium 33, an operational spacecraft in the Iridium phone satellite
constellation, and Kosmos 2251, a defunct Russian military satellite,
have collided in low-Earth orbit. The crash took place on 10 February
2009 at 1656 UTC over northern Siberia, resulting in the destruction of
both spacecraft.

Kosmos 2251, a Strela store-and-dump communications satellite, was
launched in June 1993 aboard a Kosmos 3M rocket from Plesetsk, Russia.
The 900-kg satellite was placed in a 778 km x 803 km x 74 degrees orbit.
It is likely to have operated for no more than a few years.

"While this is an extremely unusual, very low-probability event, the
Iridium constellation is uniquely designed to withstand such an event,
and the company is taking the necessary steps to replace the lost
satellite with one of its in-orbit spare satellites," Iridium stated.

But that's not the real problem.

Using a computer model, British space debris expert Hugh Lewis predicted
10,000 tennis-ball-sized debris shards - more than triple the number
created in China's anti-satellite weapon test in January 2007. "There
was more energy here than in the Chinese ASAT test so we'll see more
debris," he was quoted as saying by New Scientist.

Iridium spokeswoman Liz DeCastro said the company had had no advance
warning of an impending collision. "If the organisations that monitor
space had that information available, we are confident they would have
shared it with us." The company (or its subcontractor Boeing) apparently
did not perform own analyses.

Retired U.S. Air Force General John Campbell, Iridium's executive vice
president for government programmes, in 2007 told a forum
hosted by the George C.
Marshall Institute that Iridium had been receiving a weekly average of
400 conjunction reports from the U.S. Strategic Command's Joint Space
Operations Center.

"The ability actually to do anything with all the information is pretty
limited," he said, describing a kind of data overload. The conjunction
reports were issued every time a potential threat object was to pass
within five kilometers of a commercial satellite, he said.

It has been pointed out that Russia was also to blame for the incident.
Certainly Russian officials could have warned Iridium or its
subcontractor Boeing of the possibility of an impending collision.
However, we will never know whether Iridium or Boeing would have reacted
to such a warning -- or ignored it like the warnings from USSTRATCOM.

Iridium spokeswoman Elizabeth Mailander confirmed that the company never
performed a single collision avoidance manoeuvre in the entire history
of its satellite constellation.

/Last updated: 16 February 2009/

reply to post by C.H.U.D.


I wonder if Loyd's will consider this an act of god or if they will cover it. Think Iridium's premiums will increase?


[edit on 2/16/2009 by Phage]

Satellite collision 'more powerful than China's ASAT test

The resulting "unprecedented" debris field, says Lewis, is still being analysed by space agencies. But he expects it to create an extra 10,000 debris shards varying in size from centimetres to tennis-ball sized – more than triple the number created in the ASAT test.

"There was more energy here than in the Chinese ASAT test so it's possible we'll see more debris," Lewis says.

Nicholas Johnson, chief scientist for orbital debris at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, says the exact amount of debris generated in the collision depends on the geometry of the smashup, which is not yet known.

Source: newscientist.com




[edit on 17-2-2009 by C.H.U.D.]

reply to post by Phage


Good point Phage! I have no idea, but would guess that the premiums would have to go up.

Either way, probably not the best time to buy shares in Iridium

reply to post by C.H.U.D.


Of course, they may have gone for the collision rider on the policy in which case they would collect.

Originally posted by Anonymous ATS
reply to post by Alxandro

 

the most sophisticated systems monitor these satellites and with the use of space geometry, gravitational laws, copernicus, kepler and Isaac Newton, they can plot the trajectory of all these space objects and make adjustments using their retro rockets.. I would surmise that if one satellite hit another I would say it was done deliberately......

I'd have to agree, NORAD does not make these kinds of mistakes in tracking, the 5km collision report would have been issued, notifications would have occured. Yet all of that is missing. It is the missing pieces of this puzzle which paint a picture of deliberate deception. If DoD and other dark agencies have access to the Iridium network then they also have controls. It looks more like they did not have time to react to the change, but to admit that, would be to admit something or someone changed one or both of the Sat's orbital trajectories. This would not be a good thing to go public over. Far to many secrets up there to have prying eyes asking lots of questions. So finger pointing is the best tried an true method of cloaking the issue in red herrings and smoke.

Richard Hoagland put out his hyper dimensional theory of Sat #"33" and its true nature, linked with the nuclear sub collision a few weeks earlier.
As crazy as his theory sounds, someone is feeding him highly classified material and he's filling in the blanks with some interesting speculation worth looking into. If you crazy enough to poke a stick into that bear cage! (cuz the cage is an illusion)

Now add to that collision mystery the failure of NASA's OCO satellite to achieve orbit, and you have the makings of a great conspriacy theory!
Someone or something is sending a message about the use of space.

Can anybody confirm if the schedule launch of the Direct TV sat, slated for the Russian launch vehicle on Wednesday, ever made orbit?? I know the Russians don't share their failure publicly, but who knows?

NASA was concerned enough by the lack of accurate tracking data on the debris field caused by the recent collision to postopone the Shuttle launch. But that is what is being said publicly. Privately, I'm willing to bet, there is a bunch of chatter about these recent mishaps.

Something is up.

Originally posted by GriffinRD
I'd have to agree, NORAD does not make these kinds of mistakes in tracking, the 5km collision report would have been issued, notifications would have occured.

How do we know notifications didn't occur? The relative inclination was so high that the window for impact had to be infintesimaly small.

If DoD and other dark agencies have access to the Iridium network then they also have controls.

Why would they control the satellites if they're a customer? Put another way, why would they bother being customer if they control the satellites? They don't.

It looks more like they did not have time to react to the change, but to admit that, would be to admit something or someone changed one or both of the Sat's orbital trajectories. Furthermore, you would need some kind of ridiculous accuracy to plan this, far beyond what you could do just by observing and plotting from the ground. Minor variations in atmospheric drag would throw off any attempt to deliberately do this without terminal guidance.

To me it looks like they didn't bother to react because the risk of impact was fairly low given the extreme relative speed involved. If the orbit had suddenly changed for one of the satellites someone would have noticed. In fact, you could find out for yourself by requesting the information out of the archives:
celestrak.com...

Richard Hoagland put out his hyper dimensional theory of Sat #"33" and its true nature,

It's a comm sat, it handles communication for satellite phones, my wife knows this for a fact from first hand experience with Iridium.

NASA was concerned enough by the lack of accurate tracking data on the debris field caused by the recent collision to postopone the Shuttle launch. But that is what is being said publicly.

You can confirm for yourself using the TLE data that the debris field is at an altitude that could become a slight concern for the hubble servicing mission.

[edit on 26-2-2009 by ngchunter]

Originally posted by ngchunter
How do we know notifications didn't occur? The relative inclination was so high that the window for impact had to be infintesimaly small.

Not true:

Originally posted at CASTOR
Iridium alleged that NORAD did not warn them of the imminent threat of a collision between Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251. The Pentagon stated that NORAD cannot keep an eye on everything at all times. This might be construed as a partial admission that NORAD is stretched to the limit as far as space surveillance is concerned. Wouldn't you be if you had to keep track of (at least) 14,000 individual objects and prevent any of them from hitting something active? The Russians have stated that Cosmos 2251 has been a dead satellite since 1995 and therefore could not be manoeuvred.

What if NORAD had indeed warned Iridium of an imminent collision and Iridium simply ignored it? It is certain that NORAD must have proof if this is indeed the case. Iridium claims that the collision reports were not accurate enough, saying that if they manoeuvre their satellite, they might actually cause the collision they are trying to avoid. The truth depends on the accuracy of the collision reports.

NORAD did not have the ability to manoeuvre the Iridium 33 satellite. Iridium did not have the ability to accurately predict collisions, although they could have access to the TLEs generated by NORAD (on SpaceTrack). Using the TLE's they could have designed their own collision avoidance software. CASTOR used the TLEs from both Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251 generated before the collision, and found that at the time of collision, the two satellites were predicted to be less than 100 metres apart! if CASTOR can do this after the fact, then Iridium theoretically could have done this before the fact and might have prevented the collision.

The predicition of less than 100 meters apart would and should set off all the alarms if the TLE data is untampered with.

Originally posted by ngchunter
Why would they control the satellites if they're a customer? Put another way, why would they bother being customer if they control the satellites? They don't.

You do understand that the the intire iridium fleet was constructed by Lockheed don't you? This is the one organization responsible for some of the nations most secret satellites and had opportunity and reasons to modify these systems to install another backbone or back door. DoD
and any other secret agency would have reason and opportunity to use this network for all kinds of secret transactions or monitoring.

Originally posted by ngchunter
To me it looks like they didn't bother to react because the risk of impact was fairly low given the extreme relative speed involved. If the orbit had suddenly changed for one of the satellites someone would have noticed. In fact, you could find out for yourself by requesting the information out of the archives:

At this point I would not trust the archives. That is company dogma.

Originally posted by ngchunter

It's a comm sat, it handles communication for satellite phones, my wife knows this for a fact from first hand experience with Iridium.

Does your wife also work for Lockheed? CIA ? DoD? What is her security clearance? Even if she worked in the basement of all these organizations, she could not tell you anything of value?

I don't think any of this was random or accidental. But identifying the real players and power, is not something we will discover here.