23
votes
Accepted
How does a spacecraft such as Soyuz detect when it's on collision course with an object?
Spacecraft rely on information from earth to avoid space debris, they don't have instruments for scanning and detecting debris. There's a few reasons for this:
Power: most spacecraft don't have ...
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13
votes
How does a spacecraft such as Soyuz detect when it's on collision course with an object?
Let me tell you how a typical satellite avoids debris, which I believe will answer your question about how Soyuz does it.
All space objects are tracked by a US military organization called JSPOC. ...
- 121k
7
votes
Accepted
Which two satellites had a 44% probability of collision at 2017-01-07 21:53 UTC?
First of all, it was a miss. Whew!
The close approach predicted at 21:53:00 UTC on 7 Jan 2017 has passed without incident. The JSpOC has confirmed that both satellites are being tracked as single ...
- 121k
5
votes
Accepted
Establish if Payload is Still Operational - Space Track
(Many thanks to @Uhoh whose comments sent me off in the right direction)
This data is available on CelesTrak's SATCAT Records API.
Take ZARYA for example: https://celestrak.org/satcat/records.php?...
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4
votes
Accepted
Why are there some NORAD catalog IDs larger than 80000 in space-track?
These are so called "Analyst" objects:
Analyst objects are on-orbit objects that are tracked by the U.S.
Space Surveillance Network (SSN) with insufficient fidelity for
publication in the ...
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3
votes
Accepted
Is 18 Space Control Squadron (18 SPCS) which "detects, tracks, and identifies all artificial objects in Earth orbit" a part of Space Force?
Yes and Yes!
The 18th SPCS (f.n.a "JSpOC") is a Part of the former "Air Force Space Command" (Wikipedia 18 Space Control Squadron).
The AFSpC on the other hand became the "US Space Force" (AFSpC ...
- 2,999
3
votes
What is the probability of impact?
The equation for the distance between the two objects is simply the
magnitude of the vector between their positions. Numerical root-finding is
made easier by knowing the analytic derivative, which
is ...
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3
votes
Accepted
How can I find sources for Launch Trajectories?
It is going to be difficult to find precise data during the initial launch, however let's see what might be available:
For SpaceX launches, their videos posted in their YouTube channel display ...
- 149k
3
votes
Accepted
Get fully defined orbit from space-track.org SATCAT
Problem 1: you're querying the wrong database. For orbit data, you don't want SATCAT, you want ELSETs, which means you need to use "gp" (for General Perturbations) in your URL in place of &...
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2
votes
How to access conjunction data message data?
CDMs on space-track.org are archived 72 hours after TCA. For basic orbital elements you should be able to pull the TLE for the secondary object identified in the conjunction. However, currently there ...
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2
votes
What is the probability of impact?
The document https://www.space-track.org/documents/How_the_JSpOC_Calculates_Probability_of_Collision.pdf was written and posted in 2016. It discusses the process for the computation of probability of ...
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