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Anti-satellite missile tested by India, what could go wrong...
- Thread starter e-FTW
- Start date
Here is the article that explains what is happening.
India shows it can destroy satellites in space, worrying experts about space debris
So the PM of India is proud of demonstrating the ability to destroy the property of other countries and corporations while potentially causing multiple catastrophes in orbit? He’s delusional. And yes, I know that the US, Russia, and China have done it. That was a really bad idea as well.
Let us keep our hypocrisy in check, shall we? This is nothing more than a technology demonstrator. Achieving a rendezvous with an object in space hurtling at tremendous speeds, is a technological achievement and I guess it demonstrates how much India has come in this space.
I remember all the fear mongering when India did a nuclear test in the 90s. India as much as China has demonstrated that they are a responsible power. I have seen media and the political establishment in the US, largely use the same brush to characterize and bucket the largest democracy in the world with tin pot countries like N Korea and Iran or worse Pakistan. That gets sensational headlines and reinforces confirmation bias, but doesn't do justice to reality.
I remember all the fear mongering when India did a nuclear test in the 90s. India as much as China has demonstrated that they are a responsible power. I have seen media and the political establishment in the US, largely use the same brush to characterize and bucket the largest democracy in the world with tin pot countries like N Korea and Iran or worse Pakistan. That gets sensational headlines and reinforces confirmation bias, but doesn't do justice to reality.
Some further reading, from the always excellent Eric Berger at Ars: India shoots down a weather satellite, declares itself a “space power”
And this article from 2014 gives useful background information on how the problem of orbital debris developed and lays equal blame on the Chinese and US militaries for exacerbating the situation by developing and testing satellite destruction capabilities.
Beyond Gravity: the complex quest to take out our orbital trash
Beyond Gravity: the complex quest to take out our orbital trash
I do not consider China a “responsible power”. That country was the first to test in space the ability to destroy a satellite, a test that resulted in the instantaneous creation of thousands of pieces of space debris. That is not a “responsible” course of action.
I don’t know. The wikipedia page about it doesn’t say. Solwind - Wikipedia
I ran a search for “solwind orbiting solar observatory planned lifetime” but could not find any information that answered your question. You could try doing some related searches and see what you come up with.
Yeah, it’s kind of a hard thing to calculate and is a data point that most don’t care about (especially decades ago).
That said, a ~530km orbit is about the lowest most Leos go (space station notwithstanding) so there would have been a good bit of drag. But..it also looks like a pretty dense and asymmetric spacecraft, both of which are bad for drag. Gut feel is that it would have taken until right about 2008 (when the last bit came down) to deorbit anyway. On the first order, that actually kind of makes sense--from a probability perspective, its plausible that one piece of the debris would have an orbit very similar to the pre-destroyed satellite, and if you hand wave any in drag as being relatively equivalent, they would deorbit around the same time.
Put another way, the satellite wouldn't have deorbited much faster than it did. Best case, assuming completely passive deorbiting (no propulsion) maybe early 2000's?
Not completely related, but here's an interesting calculator:
SATELLITE ORBITAL DECAY PREDICTION
Looks like India's test wasn't so harmless after all:
India's Anti-Satellite Test Created Dangerous Debris, NASA Chief Says
"Debris ends up being there for a long time; if we wreck space, we're not getting it back," he said at the time. "And it's also important to note that creating debris fields intentionally is wrong … the entire world [has to] step up and say, if you're going to do this, you're going to pay a consequence — and right now that consequence is not being paid."
India's Anti-Satellite Test Created Dangerous Debris, NASA Chief Says
"Debris ends up being there for a long time; if we wreck space, we're not getting it back," he said at the time. "And it's also important to note that creating debris fields intentionally is wrong … the entire world [has to] step up and say, if you're going to do this, you're going to pay a consequence — and right now that consequence is not being paid."
