Rachel_Sandford
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On the 1[SUP]st[/SUP] of June, 1999, German scientists launched the 2.5 ton satellite, Rosat, from Cape Canaveral. Sent to space on an 18-month mission in search of X-ray radiation, it transmitted data about black holes and nearby galaxies for nine years until in ceased functioning.
The European Space Agency has been tracking its descent, and it eventually landed in the Bay of Bengal in the Indian ocean last October. Now, the agency is revealing that had it stayed aloft for seven more minutes, it might have hit Beijing instead, causing the worst disaster in space exploration. While most space debris burns up in the atmosphere, the Rosat was made of very durable material and about 60% of its bulk survived re-entry. That means if it hit Beijing, it would have destroyed buildings, shattered fuel lines, made large craters, killed a significant chunk of the 20million person population, and have given the Germans a very expensive bill to foot since the country responsible for launching the satellite is also responsible for any damage the satellite may do.
“Our calculations showed that, if Rosat had crashed to the ground just seven to 10 minutes later, it would have hit Beijing,” said the agency's head of space debris, Heiner Klinkrad.
ESA spokesperson Bernard Von Weyhe acknowledged that while Rosat was indeed close to hitting Beijing, it still had a lot of time not to because satellites travel so fast “if it hit one minute earlier it would have been in Siberia and one minute later in the Pacific Ocean.”
Knowing exactly where space debris will fall is never really known as the calculations can never be exact. Scientists cannot control the satellite once it starts to re-enter, plus the friction of the atmosphere slows down satellites, and those exact figures according to the amount of debris being burned up are never known.
Luckily, the world has two worry-free years till the next satellite, NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, makes its re-entry sometime between 2014 and 2023. The fluctuations in solar activity make the year difficult to predict at the moment. The Rossi was launched in 1995. the 7000-pound satellite is currently 294 miles above earth and has a 1-in-1000 chance of harming someone when it makes its re-entry, not the standard 1-in-10,000 NASA set later in the 90s.
NASA spokesperson, Beth Dickey said: “This satellite was launched four months before the first NASA standard on orbital debris mitigation and re-entry risk management was issued. As such, it was not subject to the re-entry risk guideline, since it had already been built.”
So what's being done to help make sure satellites like these don't hit anyone? Well, the EU is currently constructing a defense shield that will help the earth from man-made satellites and potentially dangerous asteroids. No details on how the shield will work have been revealed, but the contingency plan is definitely well underway.
The European Space Agency has been tracking its descent, and it eventually landed in the Bay of Bengal in the Indian ocean last October. Now, the agency is revealing that had it stayed aloft for seven more minutes, it might have hit Beijing instead, causing the worst disaster in space exploration. While most space debris burns up in the atmosphere, the Rosat was made of very durable material and about 60% of its bulk survived re-entry. That means if it hit Beijing, it would have destroyed buildings, shattered fuel lines, made large craters, killed a significant chunk of the 20million person population, and have given the Germans a very expensive bill to foot since the country responsible for launching the satellite is also responsible for any damage the satellite may do.
“Our calculations showed that, if Rosat had crashed to the ground just seven to 10 minutes later, it would have hit Beijing,” said the agency's head of space debris, Heiner Klinkrad.
ESA spokesperson Bernard Von Weyhe acknowledged that while Rosat was indeed close to hitting Beijing, it still had a lot of time not to because satellites travel so fast “if it hit one minute earlier it would have been in Siberia and one minute later in the Pacific Ocean.”
Knowing exactly where space debris will fall is never really known as the calculations can never be exact. Scientists cannot control the satellite once it starts to re-enter, plus the friction of the atmosphere slows down satellites, and those exact figures according to the amount of debris being burned up are never known.
Luckily, the world has two worry-free years till the next satellite, NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, makes its re-entry sometime between 2014 and 2023. The fluctuations in solar activity make the year difficult to predict at the moment. The Rossi was launched in 1995. the 7000-pound satellite is currently 294 miles above earth and has a 1-in-1000 chance of harming someone when it makes its re-entry, not the standard 1-in-10,000 NASA set later in the 90s.
NASA spokesperson, Beth Dickey said: “This satellite was launched four months before the first NASA standard on orbital debris mitigation and re-entry risk management was issued. As such, it was not subject to the re-entry risk guideline, since it had already been built.”
So what's being done to help make sure satellites like these don't hit anyone? Well, the EU is currently constructing a defense shield that will help the earth from man-made satellites and potentially dangerous asteroids. No details on how the shield will work have been revealed, but the contingency plan is definitely well underway.