OMG: 2012 KP24 Incoming! Are we Doomed?

Originally posted by SaneThinking
Does anyone know what sort of calamity 1 of these things would do if it per say took out a satellite, could we have a chain reaction pile up so to speak. With debris taking out multiple satelittes or do they have contingency plans exactely for these type of circumstances????

Well first of all, an impact is unlikely for any given asteroid and geostationary satellites; even if it passes right through the clark belt it's most likely going to miss everything completely. That said, if one were to hit it would be bad news. Unlike other satellites, geostationary satellites cannot alter their orbital altitude or inclination by any significant amount, or else they will cease to be geostationary (a satellite at a geostationary altitude but an inclined orbit is geosynchronous, but not geostationary) and thus they lose the ability to perform their functions. That is why zombie geostationary satellites are always a big concern; they can wander uncontrolled into the orbital position of another geostationary satellite and really muck things up. Even if they don't collide, if they block the line of sight of a normal satellite while still transmitting, there's virtually nothing the normal satellite can do to "get around" the zombie sat and still perform its normal function (Galaxy 15 posed this potential problem at one time). Obviously when it comes to asteroid threats, the only concern is one of collision though, but if a debris generation event were to occur due to a collision, other geostationary satellites would have virtually no ability to alter their orbits to dodge it without going offline.

Still here are we not lol..

reply to post by MESSAGEFROMTHESTARS


0.1 light days = 1,609,479,910 miles .... That's really far from us.....

reply to post by permadank


The distance is in lunar distances, or LD, not light days, also LD

reply to post by permadank


0.1LD is about 23,800 miles away(average), still quite far, nothing to worry about, especially at that size.

EDIT: Stereologist beat me, that will teach me to go pee with the reply window open