Seeking mathmatically minded ATS members (concerning Mexican Meteorite/Space Junk)

ok...it seems as though the official statement is the impact was caused by some "space junk"[1], more precisely, part of a Russian Spy Satellite, Cosmos 2421. The particular piece of Cosmos 2421 debris we are concerned with is cataloged with the ID number 33006. With the lack of photos and the army rushing in to secure the zone...it seems a little weird, and personally, I don't think the official statement fits the bill, and it can quite possibly be disproven if we put in the effort...I'll explain my initial thoughts just by quoting what I said on the thread[2] concerning the official space junk statement:

Originally posted by CHA0S
reply to post by Aggie Man

 

Well, it appears that there, in deed, was an impact, However, the "meteorite" was of Earthly origin. I guess this is the reason we haven't seen photographs as of yet...it's probably cordoned off.

I doubt it...I'm betting if this was merely some "Russian Space Junk" we would have some pictures by now...but we wouldn't really have much to look at because if this was a piece of a satellite it probably would have completely burnt up upon re-entry...do you understand how brittle/fragile satellites are...do you understand how much it costs to lift 1kg into space...they need to be as light as possible...I was watching a show on the discovery channel recently and they were talking about space warfare, and how easy it would be to destroy satellites...we wouldn't even need to use explosive rockets, just firing a small solid object at the satellite would tear it apart with ease...

But lets just assume for a second it's somehow possible that it stayed completely in tact upon re-entry into our atmosphere, even if it hit the ground at terminal velocity, I highly doubt it would weigh enough to leave a crater that big, especially since it isn't like solid rock/meteorite, and the weight distribution would have been significant, the area-to-mass ratio definitely needs to be considered...but I'm not an expert, and we would need to know the exact mass of the piece of satellite, before calculating how much kinetic energy it probably had on impact...then we can make some guesstimates as to how big the crater should have been...

So this is what I propose we do...we use science, math and hard facts to calculate how much mass and kinetic energy an object would need to create a crater 30m wide...because my math skills are pretty average, and I'm unable to do this properly myself...if anyone could find out the exact mass of object ID 33006 that would be very helpful, as I've looked high and low, but couldn't find the answer...I'm useless at that type of thing...we also need to know the angle of impact...but if that turns out to be too hard, we can assume it was close to vertical impact (90 degrees)...so hopefully, if things go the way I'm expecting, we might just blow their "official statement" right out of the water...which is what ATS was made for I guess ...

I also think it's important to examine Cosmos 2124's structure and material composition...because we could probably show that it would most likely burn up upon re-entry, or at least show that it would never make a crater that big if it did manage to reach the surface of Earth. Lets ask the "experts" how the satellites manages to fragment in the first place:

Cosmos 2421 was the 50th spacecraft of its class to be launched since 1974.

According to the report, "nearly half (22 out of 50) of the spacecraft have fragmented at least once, typically within a few months of the end of their primary missions." Bizarrely, the cause of these fragmentation events remain unknown.

[1]

The root cause of the many
EORSAT fragmentations remains
unknown, and at this time Cosmos
2421 is the only member of its class
still in orbit.

[3]

Interesting...they are so fragile, most of the time, they don't even know what causes the fragmentation!

Here are some useful resources that may help you along:

ARTICLES:
en.wikipedia.org...
www.enotes.com...
www.astro.lsa.umich.edu...

DOCUMENTS:
departments.colgate.edu...
supernova7.apsc.csi.cuny.edu...
www.bu.edu...
deepimpact.umd.edu...

CALCULATORS:
www.lpl.arizona.edu...
www.lpl.arizona.edu...

References:

1. news.discovery.com...
2. www.abovetopsecret.com...
3. www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov...

[edit on 12/2/10 by CHA0S]

Pretty hard to guess. A meteorite impact in Peru caused a lot of rethinking about it.

"This just isn't what we expected," Schultz says. "It was to the point that many thought this was fake. It was completely inconsistent with our understanding of how stony meteorites act."

www.abc.net.au...

I'd like to see some confirmation about that 30 meter crater in Mexico though. There is only the single initial report that seems to talk about it.

I support this thread, however I'm not a physics guy but in addition to what you mentioned, some other important things to keep in mind would be,

1)The composition of the impacted area in minerals ect.
2)If the official story changes again.
3)Seismic data?
4)Speed of object?

reply to post by Phage


Yes, you're definitely right...as I'm discovering, it can be tricky to calculate the factors involved with craters...but it's definitely possible to make some fairly reasonable estimations using the techniques available...

I too would like to see some more coverage of this event...but if the DoD is making official statements already...I think we can safely say the initial reports were correct, or they would have cleared that up by now...anyway, I found these 3 articles concerning the event:

newsolio.com...
translate.google.com...
translate.google.com...

Here is a .pdf that has some pretty good detail on the Cosmos 2421 Spy Satellite. Did not read much into it. Leave that to the experts.

orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov

edit: Well not that good of detail

[edit on 12-2-2010 by timewalker]

reply to post by BlubberyConspiracy

1)The composition of the impacted area in minerals ect.
2)If the official story changes again.
3)Seismic data?
4)Speed of object?

1. Might be a little hard to work out for the exact area of impact...but going on the surrounding areas, we should be able to work out the most likely composition if necessary.
2. Yes, there's always a chance of that happening...and it might change everything...
3. Probably not relevant.
4. We can work out, with a fairly high degree of accuracy, the velocity of the object when it impacted Earth, if we can find out the exact mass of the object. In the worste case, we can guess the most likely mass of the object, going on the mass of Cosmos 2124 (which was 3 metric tonnes) and go from there...

reply to post by timewalker
Yeah...I already linked that in the references, it has some good info on the satellite.

[edit on 12/2/10 by CHA0S]