Thought that would get your attention.

But today Two big communications satellites collided in the first-ever crash of two intact spacecraft in orbit, shooting out a pair of massive debris clouds and posing a slight risk to the international space station.

I wonder how secure we've felt with all of our little electronic devices to get us out of harms way (cell phone, sat phones, plb's, epirbs, spot,gps etc..)when something as simple as a solar flare, tin whiskers, or a dead soviet or Chinese satellite ramming into one of, or a series of critical communications or navigation satellites render them useless.I'm not much of a Ham operator as I know we have quite the numbers here but it kind of reinforces the use of a dying bread of land communications.

I've spent over a decade putting people, and objects into space (some good,some bad) and I know how fragile the systems are and how easily they can fail, it's a nature of weight VS cost. This is a reminder that sometimes the old ways should always be kept as a backup in case, compasses, maps, 2 way radios, any equipment that you may need to survive a long wait for a rescue. Sometimes the weight of a good bivy or small tent and a good quality down or synthetic bag and a stainless steel pot or cup and some fire starting flint can go a long way if it's going to be a while getting rescued or what have you. Just a thought....................

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090211/ap_on_sc/satellite_collision

2 big satellites collide 500 miles over Siberia

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Two big communications satellites collided in the first-ever crash of two intact spacecraft in orbit, shooting out a pair of massive debris clouds and posing a slight risk to the international space station.

NASA said it will take weeks to determine the full magnitude of the crash, which occurred nearly 500 miles over Siberia on Tuesday.

The collision involved an Iridium commercial satellite, which was launched in 1997, and a Russian satellite launched in 1993 and believed to be nonfunctioning. The Russian satellite was out of control, Matney said.

The Iridium craft weighed 1,235 pounds, and the Russian craft nearly a ton.

No one has any idea yet how many pieces were generated or how big they might be.

As for pieces the size of micrometers, the count will likely be in the thousands, he added.

Yes, the higher the level of the technology the more fragile it is.

Also the more tightly controlled a system is the more brittle it becomes.

If you assume 100% reliability for an item with one moving part a system with two parts is only 1/4 as reliable.

(Now the fact that both satellites were obsolete it makes me wonder if this was not a test to see if they could be collided, especially when I consider how unlikely such a collision is by pure chance)

The Russian bird was dead, but the Iridium was still functioning until it turned into roadkill.

Loosing the communications and navigation satellites is one of my personal fears. Way too much is too dependent on them these days.

I've got Doug's snail mail. My only fear is another Postal increase. I've lost count of the old 1 cent stamps I've used superglue on to make current postage.

I wonder who at Space Command is looking for a new job now?
Space Command I thought had ALL orbits tracked?
I find it difficult to believe this was an accident.
I thought that the Iridium service had difficulties in the past, I wonder if a Lloyd's Policy is involved?
Maybe my foil hat is to tight!

I wouldn't lose any sleep over that. Humanity survived pretty well for many thousands of years without a single satellite. If it means no sat phone coverage, I don't care one bit. If it means no GPS, oh well, $200 wasted but I can easily go back to map & compass. And if it means no TV coverage, I'll be actually happy about that - less crap to waste time on.

"WASHINGTON — The Governors of the U.S. Postal Service have approved new prices for mailing services, including a 2-cent increase in the price of a First-Class Mail stamp to 44 cents. Prices for mailing services are reviewed annually and adjusted each May. The new prices will go into effect Monday, May 11."

http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/2009/pr09_018.htm

Found this on the Iridium Wikipedia page.

Any room left on the envelope for an address???

I don't know if it's true or not but I was told that the USPS could deliver mail using nothing more than the extended zip code [xxxxx-xxxx]. <shrug>

I asked a couple of friends to mail things to me with only the extended zipcode for an address. When they tried to drop it at the counter, the clerk insisted that they "properly" address the envelope. Mail dropped anonymously into a curbside box came through with the city and state penciled in by hand, by someone at the post office.

The sorting machines probably require city and state.

Some day, school children may spend Earth Day in spacesuits cleaning up space garbage like this.

But seriously, it seems that Earth orbit is getting more crowded all the time, and will only get more crowded as countries like China and India gradually increase the number of satellites they put up over time. Heck, even Iran just got into the satellite launching business the other day when they put their homegrown Omid satellite into orbit, and reportedly have 7 more satellites in the works.

Falcon, any thoughts on the Kessler Syndrome? His theory is this sort of collision will release a bunch of debris that will bust up other satellites. The debris from those new hits will cause an exponential growth/cascading effect resulting in large numbers of satellites being destroyed.

Because hey, we don't already have enough to worry about.

-Blast

We need a statistician to figure the likelihood of this having been an accident. Seems to me that the odds are the only odds worse than the Texas Rangers winning the world series.

I'm guessing that problems with GPS satellites could make today's warfare difficult.

I think Google Earth has a space junk plugin that gives info on debris around Earth.

Between an impenetrable band of space pollution and 2012 "solar maximus" solar flare activity, I guess we'd better hurry up with our underground cities.

This is almost the case. The POSTNET (and I think PLANET) bar codes you find on delivered envelopes are encoded with the 9-digit zip code, a 2-digit delivery point code, and a 1-digit check code (which can be calculated yourself). You can find the 9-digit zip code and the 2-digit delivery point code via the USPS web site. (The 2-digit delivery point code will be in the Mailing Industry Information link to the right of the results display. It is usually the last two digits of the street address number or box number.) With just that information (and calculating the final check digit), you can create the POSTNET barcode which is unique for each deliverable address.

Now, if I could just figure out how to use the approved pre-sorted postage of only 32¢ when using these barcodes, I would be a very happy person.

Blast I do support his theory, when I use to process the space shuttle for over 10 years we were constantly repairing damage from so called micro meteorites. There is so much junk flying around in both low and high earth orbit from man alone not to worry about space meteorites. At one time it was just the US who tracked space debris and we offered that information to other countries for free. The problem is based on excessive amounts of money and just plain stupidity.

Every third world country wants to get into this game not to mention Russia and Europe who've been in this game for a long time. Every time a rocket is sent into space, everything from paint chips, bolts that are pyro sheared, etc. is cut loose from the vehicle only to slowly return to earth. Depending on how high the rocket goes depends on how long the debris takes to reenter. The shuttle was the only space friendly vehicle designed to keep debris to an absolute minimum. To give you an example we took a hit from a paint chip (no metal) from a old Russian rocket that put a deep hole in a 1/4 stainless steel radiator on the payload doors that came close to breaching the freon core. The shuttle was moving at roughly 17,580 miles an hour and the paint chip was traveling at a similar speed the other direction, the impact was at 35160 mph roughly and the damage was incredible for a spec of paint. It's like how we use water to cut though metal with small amounts of sand in the mix, enough pressure and velocity you can cut through just about anything. Anyhow I know I'm rambling again, sorry but to shorting it up if any debris hits anything in space at the right speed and velocity it's catastrophic and all the tracking stations do is keep the military satellites, shuttle, ISS and the Aurora from hitting big stuffs by warning or sending the command to get clear (which depletes the fuel over time). Any civilian or other countries satellites are fair game and it's up to that country to be proactive. In time I think you'll see more things taken out by debris, the military stuff you'll never hear about it in less you live in Australia where all the junk falls at.

Oops did I say Aurora, that doesn't exist

Fair enough, I didn't flesh out my thought. My concern is the wider effects of the loss of communications satellites as a whole, most of which live in only a few orbits.

What percentage of telecom traffic were there is more than 100 miles between the parties goes over land lines, vs satellite? 500 miles? I know that the undersea cables can't maintain global communications at their current level, they don't have the band width. That gives us greatly reduced vox telephone traffic, plus the interweb which I have very real doubts that most government agencies and major corporations could survive without for any length of time. And you might even see rationing of the phone circuits, so that government and "critical commercial" traffic gets through. That's going to have people really annoyed in about two or three hours.

Loss of communications has major economic issues, all negative. The good news is that no one past, say, Boston would know that after noon just about badly the busted oracle on Wall Street paniced, that would itself trigger panic. Add in the loss of business due to that loss of communications. And without good communications, even if you have power, good luck with plastic. I know I'd be making a trip to my bank's major local bank first thing in the morning (no web, I've got the day off- our software is web based), because I know by noon there will be a run. (Hypocracy, I know.) And that is just the first two or three days.

At the same time, the loss of the comm sats means that there will be a disruption of TV. I know, big deal, but lets face it- it is the modern pacifier. With luck, people will talk to their families and neighbors, yeah! But how many of us believe in good luck- if you trust in luck that much, you wouldn't have a water and long shelf life food and probably ammunition squirreled away. I expect a small but very loud portion of the population will wake up, and they aren't people we want unsedated, bored, and roaming the streets waiting to find out that they can't get money, and their plastic is no good. I'd give it that first two or three days before we started to see riots due to a full comm outage.

Never mind what it would do with long range shipping by road, rail, sea or air. Or international trade.

That is why I worry about the communications birds getting taken out. I don't care about what was done for thousands of years. Twenty years ago we weren't addicted to the web and GPS. Twenty years ago we didn't put something north of 80% of our transactions on plastic, and we didn't have stores that try to refuse cash and flat out won't take a check. That is where we are now. And it isn't going to get better without a hard, painful spasm.

Except the British who had developed a Sat Launcher then proudly told the rest of the world 'Nah, its not for us, we can't really be bothered'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBRgdhgakKE

Funny but true.

Somewhat fortunate that the satellites were roughly 500 miles up. Shuttles and the space station are at about half that. So they are at somewhat higher risk as the pieces spiral down and deorbit. Fortunately space is really big so odds remain low of any interaction.

The GPS, main communications and military surveillance satellites are, for the most part, much higher and gravity says the pieces will pretty much all go lower, not higher. So they are at far less risk. So while there are likely to be repercussions this unfortunate event isn't reason for hair-on-fire alarmism.

Even the loss of all middle orbit satellites, something that simply doesn't seem likely, would be far less an issue than it was a decade ago. Communications have shifted quite a bit in the last decade away from satellites to optical fiber cables where the bandwidth is wider, the disruptions are fewer (in part because we over invested in fiber in the 90s and there are now many redundant lines), and the maintenance and upkeep are cheaper.

On the other hand technology, and the fact that it sometimes fails, is easy to take for granted. It is easy for people to get used to GPS for wilderness, marine, even automotive, navigation and assume it will always be there.

The GPS system is great but it is not a replacement for knowing how to navigate with compass, maps, sextant, time-rate calculations and dead reckoning. IMHO learning to navigate without GPS gives a person a better, far more useful and practical, intuitive feel for the intricacies of real-world navigation. Far better than just reading a GPS screen and plotting it on a map.

The key is efficiency. The more efficient a system is, the less redundancy it has to cope with problems. The satellite systems mentioned have quite high redundancy - I regularly get 12 GPS satellites visible on my unit, for example, and I really only need 4. Even this Iridium system has some redundancy.

From The Register: "This satellite loss may result in very limited service disruption in the form of brief, occasional outages," the firm said, adding that the company expects to have a network solution in place by Friday, and will move one of its in-orbit spares to permanently replace the destroyed satellite within 30 days.

Efficiency is the enemy of reliability.

This satellite incident seems to me to have been arranged to prove a point, There are plenty of "old, broken down satellites that still have fuel and are still able to be manuevered so as to become an inplace ASAT system,,,,,,

especially against the geosynchronous orbits that have been considered (in the past) as "untouchable"!

Reminds me of the USS SCORPION.

Most likely no one at "SPACECOM" is going to lose a job. AFSPC, through the Space Surviellance Network tracks 10,000+ objects. That is not everything up there, just the stuff they can track on a regular basis due to size, reflectivity, orbit, etc.

So they are tracking it, how to do predict potential collisions? You "fly" the orbits out days in advance on computer systems to look for close passes, then you keep an eye on those. The problem is you cannot run these predictions for everything. The permutations with 10,000+ object, even with altitude and orbital screens takes huge amounts of time and computing power. Screens can be done, but often only for high priority satellites.

So why not Iridium. Don't know if they screened or not. Something to think about though is the legal and financial liabilities the government could get into if they were screening privat civilian satellites. What if the gov't said there would be a collision, so a private company moves a satellite. Then come to find out the orbital predictions were off, there never would have been a collision. Is the gov't now fiscally liable for the loss of satellite life due to fuel expenditure on an active satellite? I bet the civilian lawyers would say yes. What if the gov't, providing screens, missed a collision? Is the gov't now liable for that? These are real questions that come up when gov't agencies provide support to private companies. They can be overcome, but processes, data clearinhouses, etc have to be established. Those cost money. Who is going to pay?

Get the idea?

This happens every hurricane. Newbies don't visit an ATM until after the phone lines go down. Some stores will re-open before power and phones come back, but on a cash basis...

May I borrow this for work?

As In understand it the advice give civilian satellite owners/operators is offered as a 'best estimate' basis. Where the space authority will allow you to see most of the data they use and draw your own conclusions. That if a company does use advice offered by the agency they are doing so at their own risk.

Far all practical purposes the US government has the only integrated space traffic center and tracking system of any significant size.

It is my understanding this is similar to their legal status of the GPS system. The US government doesn't really guarantee accuracy or availability. It offers statistical estimates of accuracy and availability but does not guarantee either accuracy or availability at any specific time or place.

So if they suggest you move your satellite and it gets run over by an obsolete soviet satellite nobody saw coming your pretty much on your own.

Similarly if your following your GPS signal hiking or driving and you go off a cliff that is supposed to be twenty miles to the left your not going to have much legal recourse. You take the information on an as-is basis, warts and all.

The Russian satellite "died" long ago.

It's widely assumed that many satellites that "die" are not in fact dead but instead secretly operational. This is part of the reason so much effort is put into accurately tracking "dead" satellites: we want to know which are ones are not as "dead" as claimed.

It's also desirable not to let the bad guys know just how carefully we track "dead" satellites, especially ones that have been "dead" a decade or more - we don't want to give away just how much activity an undead satellite can get away with before being caught.

I don't believe it's particularly hard to find "close calls" in tracking data even for as many objects as the US tracks. The problem is collecting high-quality tracking data in the first place.

There are a lot of things that affect the orbit very slightly but enough to matter (gravity from Earth, Moon, Sun and even Jupiter, atmospheric drag depending on day/night heating and solar activity/CMEs acting on Earth, etc). I have read that the tracking data is no good in less than a week for many objects before the position must be measured again.

There have been enough "no comments" from SPACECOM that I'm assuming they're not going to say whether they suspected a collision was possible or not - they don't want to give away whether we do or don't put that much effort into watching long-"dead" satellites. Even if the data had said a collision was possible they might not have told Iridium in order to preserve the secret, since the odds of actually colliding are so low.

And then how many satellites are put in space for no other reason than to one day be used as a battering ram into our satellites?

So Falcon, tell us more about this aurora satellte? ; )

Uh, I don't own it. I wasn't quoting anyone, either, but now I google I see lots of prior uses.

I probably should have been a bit clearer and say that the Air Force, more specifically AFSPC has been loath in the past to provide data directly to civilians. GPS civilian signal use, while provide by a DOD satellite, is managed through the auspices of the Department of Commerce. The military is taking care of the signal, but DOC does act as an official conduit. Organizations such as NASA Goddard SFC or MIT Lincoln Labs do similar work by acting as clearinghouses for space track data.