41
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Accepted
Which LEO satellite lost over 30 km of altitude in the geomagnetic storm of 13-14 March 1989?
This appears to be an error that has propagated from paper to paper over the years. Examining the original paper cited by all these other authors, "Effects of the March 1989 Solar Activity" by Allen ...
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36
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Is it possible to track an object as small as the Tesla Roadster around the Solar System
An object as small as the Tesla Roadster will not be trackable all the way out beyond the orbit of Mars. The Tesla is too small, or space is too big, or both. The fact that the booster is still ...
- 11.8k
33
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How did the USSR track Gagarin's Vostok-1 orbital flight? Was tracking capability an issue in the choice of orbit?
The Answer is on a page by Sven Grahn.
No ocean going tracking ships were used. Only ground stations on the territory of the USSR.
In the other answers some russian sources about the use of tracking ...
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30
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Which LEO satellite lost over 30 km of altitude in the geomagnetic storm of 13-14 March 1989?
update: There has been a new analysis of "catastrophic" altitude drops during solar events. The largest drop cited is about 440 meters.
NASA Goddard feature: Solar Superstorms of the Past ...
- 149k
28
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Is there a satellite that tracks other satellites?
Tracking satellites and debris requires very powerful radar stations connected to extremely powerful computers on the ground, which can be augmented by some optical satellite technology.
Trying to ...
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23
votes
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Which type of map projection is most commonly used in control rooms?
Equirectangular. Note that in all of the images that uhoh linked (a b c), the grid squares on the map are the same size and shape at all points on the map.
Here's an example from this question, ...
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23
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What happened to Voyager 2's tracking loop capacitor? How did it get damaged? What is it for? What's a tracking loop anyway?
On April 6, 1978, a fault-protection algorithm onboard Voyager 2 automatically switched from the prime to backup receiver. However, the backup receiver's tracking-loop capacitor3 was found to have ...
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21
votes
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Tracking of spacecrafts of the Mercury project
NASA report SP-6, chapter 2 describes the tracking network in detail. It provides this overview schematic explaining how the various stations communicated with each other:
(source: NASA SP-6, chapter ...
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21
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How do satellite trackers work when showing a "satellite"?
How do satellite trackers work when showing a "satellite"?
Satellite "tracking" websites do not "track" anything.
You could blow up the satellite, and that little dot ...
- 149k
20
votes
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Suppose Zuma wasn't "lost" — what would it take to detect it?
First of all, what do we know about it's orbit? From the direction that the rocket took off, we know it's inclination was about 50 degrees. That could be adjusted higher in flight at a time that is ...
- 122k
20
votes
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Data on satellites and/or space junk
tl;dr: It looks like Hu et al (2022) (linked below) has done just that using catalogs of TLEs and the Python package Skyfield. Others have done similar but less thorough calculations - I think this ...
- 149k
18
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Is there a satellite that tracks other satellites?
There are at least a few space based sensors, although I'm having some real difficulty getting more details about them. This article mentions them in particular.
It seems these sensors are known as ...
- 122k
18
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Are commercial communications satellites in GEO being constantly monitored by telescopes?
It seems that the company ExoAnalytic Solutions regularly observes high- orbiting satellites (MEO, HEO, and GEO), using the data to provide tracking, ensure they are at the right spot, and provide ...
- 122k
17
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How did the USSR track Gagarin's Vostok-1 orbital flight? Was tracking capability an issue in the choice of orbit?
Ships were used to receive telemetry.
Work in the ocean took place on February 12, 1961. At this time,
preparations for the launch of the world's first manned spacecraft
Vostok were completed. ...
- 7,903
16
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How did the USSR track Gagarin's Vostok-1 orbital flight? Was tracking capability an issue in the choice of orbit?
I've found that language barrier problem exists. There are many info in Russian that have no proper translations in English.
There were space tracking ships too.
Information that USSR had not them ...
- 9,091
15
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How did the USSR track Gagarin's Vostok-1 orbital flight? Was tracking capability an issue in the choice of orbit?
According to this source (in Russian; includes communication log and post-flight debriefing) the only ground stations that are listed as those that were communicating with Gagarin were located in USSR....
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14
votes
Accepted
What is software called which matches a picture to a star catalog?
You're looking for a "plate solver". Astrometry.net is probably the best, but others like ASTAP and Match exist. There are many open-source desktop plate solvers too, most of which use ...
- 256
13
votes
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Is there a way (working or in development) to track satellites in lunar orbit like we track objects in Earth Orbit?
From Why was the 100m Green Bank dish needed together with DSN's 70m Goldstone dish to detect Chandrayaan-1 in lunar orbit?
above: "This computer-generated image depicts the Chandrayaan-1's ...
- 149k
12
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Is it possible to track an object as small as the Tesla Roadster around the Solar System
tl;dr: When the Roadster is about 1 AU away from both the Earth and the Sun, it will have an apparent magnitude $m$ equal to its absolute magnitude $M$ or +28. According to Wikipedia Hubble's limiting ...
- 149k
12
votes
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Has NORAD ever experienced a catastrophic event and "lost track of" a bunch of objects?
Yes, during the geomagnetic storm of March 1989, NORAD lost track of thousands of objects:
During the great geomagnetic storm of 13-14 March 1989, tracking of thousands of space objects was lost ...
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12
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How do satellite trackers work when showing a "satellite"?
None of the current services show actual 'live' data.
This is due to physics which mean achieving global coverage of LEO would require a site looking DOWN from high orbit.
Rather we have a multitude ...
- 23.4k
10
votes
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How does the SpaceBEEs' experimental passive radar reflector work?
The original 4 satellites were 0.25U cubesats (as shown in the picture in the question) while the newer ones are 1U (cubical). The larger size of the newer sats provides space for Van Atta reflectors ...
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10
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How is satellite position tracked in practice?
Initially, when a new satellite is launched in space orbital dynamics models using launch and deployment parameters to provide an estimation of the orbit of the target satellite.
As @pearsonartphoto ...
- 346
10
votes
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Units of "pixels" in a research paper on digital streak formation for optical payloads
$$L_{st} =\frac{f \ v_{t, a} \ \tau}{\cos(\theta_{obj}) \ d \ p}$$
where tau is the exposure time, $f$ is the focal length, $v_{t,a}$ is the averaged value of the object's tangential velocity in the ...
- 149k
9
votes
Accepted
Is it possible for the Deep Space Network to use MSPA and antenna arraying simultaneously?
If you have three apertures pointed at Mars, then you would array all three for both orbiters. There would be no point in throwing away the signal of one of the orbiters on any of the antennas. You ...
- 58.2k
9
votes
Is it possible to track an object as small as the Tesla Roadster around the Solar System
The Roadster itself? No. Asteroid surveys aren't really set up to track things that small.
However, the Roadster is still attached to the upper stage of the Falcon Heavy. The full assembly is ...
- 15.7k
9
votes
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Why hasn't DSCOVR's trajectory determination been updated in JPL's Horizons after 2015-Aug-4?
No new DSCOVR spacecraft trajectory data has been made available by this non-NASA (NOAA) mission since May 2017.
(Flight projects are not required to provide trajectory data to Horizons and, in this ...
- 306
9
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Will the new "TLE format" be orbitally-mechanically better than traditional TLEs?
Skimming CCSDS RECOMMENDED STANDARD FOR ORBIT DATA MESSAGES, it looks to me like three different message types are defined: Orbit Parameter Message (OPM), Orbit Mean Elements Message (OMM), and Orbit ...
- 170k
8
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Is there a satellite that tracks other satellites?
The Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) (unsurprisingly given its name) provides tracking. But, perhaps in a different sense that the other answers are discussing. TDRSS provides co-...
- 188k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible