3
$\begingroup$

The question What kinds of things have been tossed out of the ISS? contains a now-rotted link to a YouTube video of a steel ball being thrown from the ISS for radar tracking tests. I'd sourced it from Why A Ball Thrown To Earth From Orbit "Boomerangs". Can Astronauts Hit Earth With A Ball, Arrow Or Bullet? (By inventor & programmer (and debunker) Robert Walker, October 24th 2015).

Naughty me! in 2016 at least. From meta three years later: Are meaningless link titles like "Source" sub-optimal, leaving the answer unrepairable if a link rots/breaks?

Here's the description of the video from the linked source of the video:

They do actually throw things out of the ISS from time to time as scientific experiments. They choose the direction to throw it to make sure it won't come back and hit the ISS.

Here is a steel ball thrown out of the ISS to help test how well ground stations can track orbital debris

followed by the now broken YouTube link https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=24&v=z5HcXnjtICE. There's also a graphic (below), but in it there are no radar-trackable steel balls in sight as far as I can tell.

Question: What radar-trackable steel ball was thrown from the ISS before October 2015? If so, how much of the Who? What? Where? When? Wy? How? can be reconstructed?

How might be "In what direction?" i.e.

Why A Ball Thrown To Earth From Orbit "Boomerangs". Can Astronauts Hit Earth With A Ball, Arrow Or Bullet?

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
3
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ space.stackexchange.com/questions/35151/… $\endgroup$
    – A. Rumlin
    Nov 24, 2020 at 13:10
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ @A.Rumlin ha!!! I'm getting old :-) Please vote to close as duplicate. Excellent. $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Nov 24, 2020 at 13:16
  • $\begingroup$ My gosh, it's almost identical wording. At least I'm consistent. $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Nov 24, 2020 at 13:18

0

Reset to default