Questions tagged [impact]
Questions regarding the collision of one thing with another
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How deep does impact heating penetrate?
Let's say I find a cold rocky body with no atmosphere, and I bombard its surface with breathable air, thus converting the gas's GPE into heat. This will warm the body somewhat (and might initiate ...
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How can we avoid collisions when moving from one orbit to another?
Imagine that my ship is parked in LEO and needs to transfer to a higher orbit. It makes a Hohmann transfer and flies to the needed orbit by an elliptical trajectory. But this trajectory is crossing a ...
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What are these squiggly lines in Jonathan McDowell's tweets about Yunhai-1?
Anton Petrov's new video Another Satellite Collided in Space, But Everyone Missed It Until Now (below) is fun to watch, and links to Jonathan McDowell's tweet string which begins
Space-Track catalog ...
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Was CloudSat hit by debris? If so, when, how bad was it, and where was it reported?
Anton Petrov's new video Another Satellite Collided in Space, But Everyone Missed It Until Now (below) is fun to watch, and links to Jonathan McDowell's tweet string which begins
Space-Track catalog ...
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Has there been any bolide-spacecraft near-miss?
Has there been any incident where a reentering spacecraft nearly collided with a meteor?
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How much could a full-blown Starlink constellation contribute to a future Kessler scenario? What would be the worst-case scenario?
Discussions in comments below this answer to What is the biggest satellite constellation in space right now? have touched on risk vs reward and the Kessler Syndrome in the context of full-blown ...
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Puzzler: Why higher solar phase angle (SPA) allows for many more feasible FastKD (kinetic deflection) communications satellite “hijacking” missions?
Space.com's advert-laden Repurposed communications satellites could help save humanity from an asteroid impact ends with:
The study results were presented at the Planetary Defence (sic) Conference ...
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Is there an estimate for the average mass of all meteoroids and asteroids hitting Earth's atmosphere in one year?
I wonder how much mass is entering Earth's atmosphere every year in the form of meteoroids and asteroids. This excludes micro-meteoroids, dust particles, molecules etc.
Quick search result talks only ...
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How much more likely is it for a colony on Mars to receive a damaging meteorite hit than a similar structure on Earth?
Meteorite damage probability is low both on Mars and Earth, but Earth has a thick atmosphere, which Mars does not. The thinner atmosphere on Mars should yield some increase of impact probability.
Is ...
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Would detonating a powerful nuke on the Moon really cause a Richter 7 moonquake? Do we know enough about the moon to predict this?
A recent episode of Kurzgesagt explores the consequences of exploding a hydrogen bomb on/near the surface of the moon. At 3:48 they consider the resulting moonquake, saying it's comparable to a ...
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Legality of nuclear debris field on the Moon?
A while ago, I asked about what happens to a nuclear engine that gets smashed into the Moon. While not conclusively answered, it's likely that the contaminated area would be of significant size.
But ...
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Increase in period and semi-major axis following near head-on collision between Cerise and Ariane debris (1996)
This report describes the collision of the French satellite Cerise with a piece of Ariane rocket debris (object no. 18208) in 1996:
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?...
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Do space organisations take the positions of space junk and satellites into account when launching?
There are so many satellites orbiting Earth now at various altitudes and there is quite a lot of space junk floating around as well.
Now although there are so many satellites and so much junk up ...
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Why are there mountains/mounds in the centre of craters on the lunar surface?
From clear images of moon's surface we can see many of the craters have small mountains/mounds (or montes) in the centre. So, what is the mechanism behind the formation of these mountains and which ...
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How many times were things crashed into the Moon "for science" (seismic events)?
This answer to Did Apollo 13 produce any scientific results? begins:
In addition to crashing the Saturn V's S-IVB into the moon to collect seismic data from sensors installed by the crews of Apollo ...
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