91
votes
Is the SpaceX Falcon Heavy payload (a Tesla car) space junk?
No, because it is not in Earth orbit
First the payload does have a purpose: it is a boilerplate, and those have a purpose, namely to "test various configurations and basic size, load, and handling ...
- 1,829
78
votes
Accepted
Shouldn't space junk fall back to Earth on its own? How long will take for a ~1 cm piece of junk in LEO to fall back to Earth on its own for example?
It depends on the altitude. Here is a chart from ESA and UNOOSA. Basically, anything under 500 km will fall relatively quickly, maybe 25 years. Everything under 800 km should fall within a century or ...
- 121k
76
votes
Accepted
Why would a box full of 1cm balls released into LEO be so scary to an engineer supporting the ISS?
Well, gee, this question may as well have my name printed directly on it!
Spacecraft protection from the orbital debris threat comes in two flavors:
Shield and withstand
Detect and avoid
To start, ...
- 17.2k
75
votes
Accepted
Is Nibiru real or totally science fiction?
Nibiru is fiction.
Nibiru, a purported large object headed toward Earth, simply put - does not exist. There is no credible evidence - telescopic or otherwise - for this object's existence. There ...
- 126k
63
votes
Is the SpaceX Falcon Heavy payload (a Tesla car) space junk?
Yes, it's space junk: after about 6 hours, the second stage will stop working and there will be no way to change the trajectory of stage and payload. So it's a non-functional satellite, i.e. junk. An ...
- 126k
51
votes
Accepted
Are pictures of Earth' space junk realistic?
No, it's entirely unrealistic.
The Earth is very large by the standards of what you deal with in day to day life -- it's about 13 million meters in diameter.
Satellites are typically only a few meters ...
- 167k
50
votes
BBC: "A rocket launched by Elon Musk's space exploration company is on course to crash into the Moon and explode." Will it really explode?
It depends on how you define "explosion". Most generally, it merely describes something that breaks into pieces violently. Astronomical impact events can generate explosions simply from ...
- 3,687
44
votes
Is the SpaceX Falcon Heavy payload (a Tesla car) space junk?
Footnotes:
${}^1$ That the term "Space Junk" (as used in this answer and which is probably the right answer) has a different generally agreed meaning in spacecraft lingo than just plain "Junk" has ...
- 149k
42
votes
Accepted
Is it possible to observe space debris with Binoculars?
Yes, I've done it myself in my backyard in suburban Houston.
During a spacewalk in ISS increment 50, an MMOD shield intended for the axial port of Node 3 was lost. It's visible in this video ...
- 17.2k
41
votes
Is Nibiru real or totally science fiction?
The name Nibiru does appear in science fiction.
However, the stuff to which you refer is not science fiction. It's just baloney, malarkey, or "fake news."
According to Wikipedia's article Nibiru ...
- 149k
41
votes
Accepted
Why aren't there any active space debris removal systems implemented currently?
Removing debris costs money.
Even with many words like "efficient", "low-cost", and so forth, a system capable of removing a significant amount of space debris still involves a budget requirement ...
38
votes
Accepted
Do things get dirty in space?
Spooky
This one is subjective. To some, just finding an abandoned spaceship would be spooky. I'll say there's probably not a lot that has to happen to evoke this feeling.
Rusted
Actually, unless ...
- 23.8k
36
votes
Flung debris in lunar landing
Great question. The exhaust velocity from typical landing engines is about 3 km/s. You can imagine good-sized particles being accelerated to a significant fraction of that, say 1 km/s, which is the ...
- 58.5k
36
votes
Accepted
Should man-made satellites feature an intelligent inverted "cow catcher"?
...adjust the angle of the cow catcher to deflect earthward
The catcher could be coupled in a way that would allow it to absorb impact gradually by continuous springs.
The problem with this is that ...
- 512
36
votes
Are pictures of Earth' space junk realistic?
The "actual data" is that for every one of their dots, there is probably a real debris fragment, the mix of satellites/rocket bodies etc is probably broadly right, and so on.
However, the ...
- 7,736
35
votes
India just shot down a satellite from the ground. At what altitude range is the resulting debris field?
The apogee/ perigee of 2019-006A, the object likely shot down, was 260- 282 km, pretty low. Some of that debris could be quite a bit higher, but most of it will be lower, and all of it will have a new ...
- 121k
33
votes
Accepted
What would be the first noticeable consequences to the general public of widespread satellite destruction?
What would you notice first?
Satellite navigation: immediately (depending on how often you use satnav)
TV: immediately (depending on how often you use TV). Even if you don't use satellite TV ...
- 126k
32
votes
Why would a box full of 1cm balls released into LEO be so scary to an engineer supporting the ISS?
There's a few pieces of information that are needed to explain why one might be wary of 1 cm objects:
Objects as small as 4 inches (about 10 cm) can be seen by radars or optical telescopes on Earth
...
- 23.8k
32
votes
BBC: "A rocket launched by Elon Musk's space exploration company is on course to crash into the Moon and explode." Will it really explode?
I think it's worth looking at how much energy that rocket is going to be carrying. Plugging the 4 tonnes and 5000 mph figures into an Online calculator we find that the impact will carry close to 10 ...
- 421
31
votes
Accepted
Why is the ribbon of decommissioned geosynchronous satellites skewed?
The apparent source of the data (as it is linked in the source linked in the description of the author of this map) is http://apps.agi.com/SatelliteViewer/
In this animated view you can see that ...
- 14.9k
29
votes
Accepted
Did any Columbia debris continue orbiting Earth?
No. Even the highest ballistic coefficient debris (engine turbopumps, etc) only made it to Louisiana.
Heavier objects with
higher ballistic coefficients, a measure of how far objects will
travel in ...
- 178k
28
votes
Accepted
What is the largest piece of space debris volumetrically?
Initial and Bonus Answer: With a volume of 609.31 M^3 and an empty mass of 15,500kg (13,500 kg empty weight plus 2,000kg for the attached Instrument Unit), J002E3 is Apollo 12's S-IVB stage (...
- 2,275
28
votes
Shouldn't space junk fall back to Earth on its own? How long will take for a ~1 cm piece of junk in LEO to fall back to Earth on its own for example?
Space debris poses a real risk for spacecraft in LEO. From the Technical Report on Space Debris UN Committee on the Peaceful uses of Outer Space (Table 5), a satellite in orbit can expect to collide ...
- 17.7k
28
votes
Accepted
How dangerous is tossing equipment off the ISS?
tl;dr It's not dangerous or they don't do it.
As you might expect, this gets studied to death before it happens.
Anything planned to be jettisoned or deployed from the ISS or any ISS Visiting Vehicle ...
- 178k
26
votes
Accepted
What is the biggest piece of space junk?
The UCS has a list of satellites which can be sorted by launch mass.
The top 10 is mostly spy satellites for which it's difficult to determine if they're active or defunct.
The heaviest satellite ...
- 126k
25
votes
How would blockchain be integrated into spaceflight? Have any methods been proposed yet?
Blockchain is a very poor solution to a specific problem: achieving ledger consensus among a large number of agents when there is substantial incentive to corrupt the record, and the entries in the ...
- 167k
24
votes
Are most Earth polar satellites launched to the South or to the North? And why?
There's no real distinction once you're in orbit; a northbound LEO orbit at a given longitude at a given time is a southbound orbit at nearly the opposite longitude 45 minutes later. The rotation of ...
- 167k
23
votes
Is Nibiru real or totally science fiction?
To resonate with @Hobbes general characterization: Nibiru is contrived nonsense.
Ignoring the fact that previously announced dates for the Earth cataclysm have come and gone with no such mayhem, some ...
- 18.2k
23
votes
What is the largest piece of space debris volumetrically?
I would say it's probably Envisat. It is definitely the heaviest although i'm not sure if it is also the largest piece volumetrically. We had a full scale 'mock up' at our faculty and I can confirm ...
- 1,550
22
votes
Accepted
What are the conditions for re-entry of an object in a (highly) elliptical orbit?
I'll give you an intuitive way to think about it, then a script to play around with if you like.
When the spacecraft is at periapsis, it is there, at periapsis. A bit of drag isn't going to change ...
- 149k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible