Questions tagged [impact]
Questions regarding the collision of one thing with another
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How likely is it that the Voyager spacecrafts haven't yet been damaged by micrometeoroids?
Both Voyagers have been traveling at over $60,000$ km/h for well over four decades and still seem to function properly, taking into account the slowly dropping power and warmth available from their ...
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Does earth orbiting debris that threatens the space station have a particular direction bias?
I'm starting to investigate the danger of orbital debris on the ISS (international space station). One could assume that due to the orbital velocity vector, that any debris that the ISS encounter, ...
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Have any bits of a space mission ever collided with a planet or large moon (not Earth) that was not a target of the mission?
For example, a mission to Mars for which some bit of hardware ended up entering Venus's atmosphere.
Has this ever happened, or at least are there projections that it may happen?
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Whats left of the DART Spacecraft after impact?
DART impacted Dimorphos with around 6km/sec, which is really fast. I am wondering what is left of the spacecraft? What state is it now probably? Seeking the results of car crashes with 200+ kph when ...
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What is the methodology to determine a meteorite strike vs space debris?
From this tweet, it seems the ISS Soyuz that sprung a leak in December was damaged by a micrometeorite
Here's little bit more info on Soyuz MS-22 impact. The trajectory analysis very strongly points ...
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How would I calculate the resulting orbit of Dimorphos around Didymos A after the DART mission?
I have been trying to find a way to calculate how the DART mission affected Didymos A, independent of NASA's findings. I found one answer to this question, but it was as if they ignored Didymos A and ...
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Why not crash the ICPS into the Moon?
The Wikipedia article on Artemis 1 says that an ICPS disposal burn was performed after spacecraft separation. This was intended to send the ICPS into heliocentric orbit after passing the Moon. Why ...
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How different would a comet impact be vs. an asteroid impact?
If a 50 meter asteroid caused a 1.5 kilometer crater as Barringer Crater is described, how different would the impact of a 50 meter comet be, assuming the comet was 85% water and other volatiles, with ...
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What happens if a centimeter-sized particle hits a spaceship at orbital velocity?
How much damage would a centimeter sized particle weighing a few grams do when it impacts a spaceship at orbital velocity? Let's say 30 km/s (Earth's rotation speed around the Sun). Such a particle ...
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How often do active satellites have to change course to avoid other active satellites?
I'm only aware of the ESA and SpaceX incident in 2019. Does this happen more regularly especially now with more active Starlink satellites and other constellations?
More importantly, are there efforts ...
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Is the impact of Chang’e 5-T1 rocket stage on the Moon's far side on March 4th likely to launch any debris into Moon or Earth orbit?
It is predicted that the Chang’e 5-T1 rocket stage will impact the Moon's far side on March 4th. The stage apparently weighs about 4 tonnes and will impact at 2.5 km/s at a shallow angle.
There's ...
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Can we watch the object move towards the Moon and hit it this week at home? Will there be live telescope feeds?
I'm not even going to name the object because there's been some variability and excitement in its identification (DSCOVR 2nd stage, no not DSCOVR, it's Chinese, no not that Chinse rocket body, this ...
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Where will the March 4, 2022 impactor hit the Moon? Will it be visible from Earth?
Wikipedia's LCROSS says:
Centaur impacted successfully on October 9, 2009, at 11:31 UTC. The Shepherding Spacecraft descended through Centaur's ejectate plume, collected and relayed data, impacting ...
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BBC: "In 2009 Prof McDowell & other astronomers performed an experiment in which a similar-sized rocket was crashed into the Moon." Really? Which one?
The line following the title of BBC's Elon Musk SpaceX rocket on collision course with moon reads:
A rocket launched by Elon Musk's space exploration company is on course to crash into the Moon and ...
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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?
The line following the title of BBC's Elon Musk SpaceX rocket on collision course with moon reads:
A rocket launched by Elon Musk's space exploration company is on course to crash into the Moon and ...
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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 ...
Kantura
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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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Frequency of asteroid impacts on Ceres?
Are there estimates of asteroid impact frequency on Ceres? I'm looking for a graph that plots time between impacts against size of the impactor. Thanks!
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Does NASA have an end-of-the-world policy?
If an asteroid were detected, shooting towards earth with enough speed and certainty that it would all but guarantee a sequel of the end of the dinosaurs. Observatories and space agencies would almost ...
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What does "MSR" represent in the context of this predicted satellite conjunction?
In a series of four tweets starting with this one (found in 2 satellites will narrowly avoid colliding at 32,800 mph over Pittsburgh on Wednesday)
1/ We are monitoring a close approach event ...
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How did two satellites end up in almost the same orbit except moving in opposite directions?
In a series of four tweets starting with this one (found in 2 satellites will narrowly avoid colliding at 32,800 mph over Pittsburgh on Wednesday)
1/ We are monitoring a close approach event ...
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How big an asteroid could we take out with an ICBM?
Obviously it's not going to be all that big as the intercept would occur only a few minutes before impact and the rubble is still going to hit. However, if the pieces are small enough they go boom in ...
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Are there any specific plans for how to deal with near-Earth comets? If not, should there be?
You hear a lot about how NASA, ESA and other space agencies are taking action to catalogue asteroids that might one day collide with us, but also figure out how to avert such a catastrophe if one day ...
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Are there any equations out there that can calculate the burnup of an asteroid depending on angle?
Are there any equations that can calculate the burnup of an asteroid depending on the angle? I want to be able to calculate the magnitude of an asteroid impact with the angle being the changeable ...
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How many satellites can stay in a Lagrange point?
Lagrange points as I understand it are points in space between 2 objects where the gravitational pull between them is effectively equal. That makes station keeping at these points relatively easy.
...
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Is deformation of the impact attenuation system visible on the surviving Apollo command modules?
As pointed out in this question, the Apollo command module had crushable ribs along one edge of the base of the cone, and crushable struts that suspended the crew couches inside the vehicle. I've ...
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Do the velocities of orbital debris have a bias in the direction of Earth's rotation?
Most spacecraft are launched and orbit prograde -- in the same direction that the Earth rotates -- to give a "speed boost" to get to orbital velocity. One would therefore expect that the trajectories ...
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How did fictional asteroid 2019 PDC get its name?
Gizmodo's NASA and FEMA Will Simulate an Impending Asteroid Strike Next Week
The hypothetical discovery takes place in 2019, but what does "PDC" stand for?
Perhaps it is another "discovery" by the ...
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Why does this satellite collision debris field look like a big "X"?
This answer to the question Whats the protocol if two satellites collide? shows the image below, and I don't understand the shape.
I would have expected two "jets" of debris, each projecting roughly ...
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Could a satellite in GEO-orbit make an evasive maneuver to avoid an anti-satellite impactor?
Communication satellites orbit at an altitude a couple of hundred times above the satellite that the Indian government recently shot down. Also GPS-satellites are about one hundred times further up ...
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What are the chances a space probe will make it to another star without hitting a bit of space dust?
tl;dr: What is the density of "space dust" or micrometeorites in interstellar space, and how likely is it that a tiny interstellar craft could avoid hitting any?
In a future time we will likely ...
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A starship is traveling at 0.9c and collides with a small rock. Will it leave a clean hole through, or will more happen?
Say there is a football sized rock in the path of the ship. Will it create a football sized hole through the ship in the blink of an eye, or will more happen? The ship would be filled with metal, ...
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Highest velocity impact between a spacecraft and a solar system body? What about for a dedicated impactor (spacecraft component)?
In this answer I mention the proposed impact of DART:
Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Mission
Double Asteroid Redirection Test
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Element of the ...
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Use of thrusters for Collision Avoidance Maneuver
I'm building an orbit propagator that gives the position of two satellites at time T. The position are expressed in ECI and after that are being transformed in LVLH frame (as mentioned ECI to LVLH ...
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Asteroid impact on the Moon: which effects cause the flash?
It is most likely that there was an impact on the Moon during yesterday's lunar eclipse. I am trying to get some more understanding of this so that I could maybe do a more detailed video on this ...
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If a Voyager crashes into something, would we know?
A recent question asked about the feasibility of using Voyager 2 to detect objects in the Oort cloud. The answers indicate, among other issues, the instruments on-board the Voyagers would likely be ...
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What prevents all these man-made objects flying in space from colliding with each other?
Does NASA know the location of every object in orbit and they calculate satellite and shuttle launches around not hitting these objects or are they just rolling the dice that the probability of ...
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