When I read that earlier, it struck me[1] that they didn't really explain that 'only' going a little bit away from geostationary(/-synchronous) leaves it a
long long way from threatening the ISS and its spacewalkers.
In fact, the trouble caused by rogue GEO/near-GEO objects is relatively small for a number of reasons[2], which makes the decision to first deal with a
partly Graveyard-orbitted item slightly puzzling. (Might just be because it was easier to deal with than objects that are technically in decaying orbits after LEO and even high-LEO manouverability failures, that are likely to 'solve themselves' quicker than the legal process dealing with the still theoretical risk and need to steer 'live' items around a bit for the duration.) But perhaps we'll see more, soon, now that they've plucked this fruit from a surprisingly high branch.
In other Space news, I nearly posted here about the
JuMBOs discovered by JWST in Orion's 'sword' nebula. Everyone's trying to work out why we can see so many nomad-pairs of that kind being thrown about (and out) by nascent planetary discs.
[1] But not at (counter-)orbital speeds, obviously.
[2] Fewer things are being sent there than with LEO. Which has a volumetric footprint much larger (even accounting for mostly concentrating them in a narrow torus). Most items are orbitting pretty tightly to the same plan (drift from being off '-stationary', and the small figure-of-8 movement by being eccentric in various ways are the major issue) making intersections slow, in an already slower or it, and not anything like the problems of similarly concentric
polar orbits (and/or heliostatic semi-polar ones) allowing objects to be regularly encountering each other at a relative speed double that of the orbit alone), though there might be
some risk from those in an actual Tundra orbit
Author
Topic: Space Thread (Read 366415 times)