Headlines
The Air Force will improve its ability to track space junk later this year when airmen begin using a new suite of equipment to help them watch it all, Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz said last week.
Vega Space GmbH of Germany will provide equipment and training for the new German Space Situational Awareness Center in Uedem under a contract that calls for the hardware and software to be installed by July, Darmstadt-based Vega announced.
On a typical day there are about 29,000 commercial air flights in the U.S. and a total of 87,000 private, cargo and commercial flights, according to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. Worldwide the numbers are less specific but the total of all flights is likely to be well over 200,000 — maybe even a quarter-million each day. The remarkable thing about these air flights is their overall safety — over a billion miles flown per fatality.
The Russian Express-AM4 satellite, built by Astrium, was designed for geosynchronous orbit, but stranded in a six hour elliptical orbit at an inclination of 51 deg by a Proton Briz-M upper stage failure last August. Underwriters later declared the satellite a total loss and paid the insurance claim to the Russian Satellite Communications Co. (RSCC), owners of the spacecraft.
The Space Data Association (SDA), established by commercial satellite operators to improve the safety and efficiency of space operations, has been awarded the “Innovation in Industry Collaboration on the Safe Use of Space” award by the Society of Satellite Professionals International (SSPI).
U.S. Air Force warnings to satellite operators of impending close orbital passes involving their satellites are not reliable, primarily because the service is unable to automatically process precise orbit-location data available from these companies, according to industry officials.
While the odds are tiny that anyone on Earth will be hit, the chances that all this orbiting space debris and litter will interfere with working satellites or the International Space Station are getting higher, according to a recent report by the National Research Council.
It's called CleanSpace One and it's designed to tackle the 17,000-mph mess we've made around our planet.
The $11 million "janitor satellite" is under development at the Swiss Space Center in the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology (EPFL). Its target: derelict satellites 430 miles up that threaten our communications and information networks.
Low Earth orbit just got a free spring-clean, thanks to the sun. It turns out that increased solar activity in recent years has removed some of the satellite debris that clogs this region, making it temporarily safer for other satellites and astronauts.
Russia's huge Phobos-Grunt Mars probe is the latest dead satellite to become space junk — the kind of trash clogging the orbital corridors around Earth that is the subject of a new 3D film soon to hit the big screen.
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