NASA released information on April 30 regarding a near-collision between a defunct Soviet-era spy satellite and a NASA space telescope in 2012.
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, a $690 million piece of equipment, was launched in 2008 to scan for evidence of dark matter, black holes, and spinning pulsars in space. It does this by seeking instances of gamma radiation bursts. Its functional well-being was challenged on April 3 of last year by the Russian Cosmos 1805, a reconnaissance satellite weighing 1.5 tons.
The two spacecraft barely avoided striking one another four days after NASA scientists were alerted to the 1805 satellite’s potential collision trajectory. The initial estimate was that the craft would miss the Fermi telescope by a mere 700 feet; careful monitoring revealed that despite their different orbits, the two would enter the same point in space within 30 milliseconds of one another.
Rather than risk the ill-calculated destruction of one of their own operational tools, the Fermi Flight Dynamics Team prepared to fire the telescope’s attitude thrusters to move it further from the 1805 satellite’s path. Designed just for these types of situations, the thrusters—never having been tested previously—successfully maneuvered the telescope to a position that provided a 6 mile buffer between the two craft.
Eric Stoneking, lead engineer for attitude control with Fermi, elaborated further. “The maneuver, which was performed by the spacecraft itself based on procedures we developed a long time ago, was very simple, just firing all thrusters for one second.”
Russia’s 1805 satellite was traveling at a speed of 27,000 miles per hour, said NASA officials. Should it have collided with Fermi, the energy released would have been equivalent to the ignition of two and a half tons of explosives.
NASA had good reason for concern. In February of 2009, the defunct Russian Cosmos 2251 communications satellite was set to pass the functional Iridium 33 communications satellite by 1,900 feet. Nothing was done aside from monitoring the situation, and contact was eventually lost with Iridium at the point of crossover. Radar then picked up the existence of two new, massive debris clouds—evidence of the devastating collision.
The incident calls further attention to the space debris dilemma, which recently received heightened regard after the European Space Agency’s sixth annual conference on the topic convened last month. The conference urged the removal of five to ten large objects from space per year to avoid the destabilization of low-Earth orbit by space “junk.”
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NASA dodges Soviet spy satellite, releases STUNNING details of dangerous flyby – Science Recorder
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NASA dodges Soviet spy satellite, releases STUNNING details of dangerous flyby - Science Recorder
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