This is actually a great question. I've even asked it myself to some coworkers (in the Guidance, Navigation, and Control department). When it comes down to it, the space above Earth where satellites orbit is actually vast. There's a heck of a lot more space than most images showing space debris will elude to. This is largely because most of those images showing space junk use dots to represent the pieces we know about. The problem is that given the scale of the Earth in these images, that tiny dot is actually MASSIVE compared to the realistic size of even a large satellite. The truth is that while there's a large amount debris, the chance of actually hitting anything is pretty small due to the sheer amount of space the debris is distributed in. The images showing space debris as dots or other icons are actually pretty poor representations of the space debris problem (they look cool though). A probability distribution or similar is what I would imagine as being more useful.
Bryce KB1LQC
On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 9:22 PM, MICHAEL mikef1234@live.com wrote:
For the longest time I have been wondering how a satellite is placed in orbit without hitting anything else? I have seen pictures of all the stuff circling the Earth and it just baffles me how anyone can get anything in orbit without hitting anything. Can anyone explain this?
Mike/N8GBU
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