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
Since the path that the launch vehicle will take is very well defined (unless something goes wrong!), and the paths of most objects that would intersect this path can be predicted, it becomes a juggling act to get a time when the launch vehicle will have a clear path, and your ground assets are available.
Since it takes a certain amount of time to get the launch vehicle ready, you work "backwards" from when you know your path will be clear on your trajectory to determine when you start your countdown.
The launch provider I work for has several people who do nothing but plan things like this, in coordination with USSTRATCOM, NASA, the FAA, the European Space Agency, the Russian Space Agency, and all the other other launch providers.
In the 9 years I've been doing my part (Communications, Range, and Telemetry) we've only had one "external" hold, and that was caused by NASA having to move the ISS a bit because the ISS was going to have a close approach of some space junk.
It's called a COLA (COllision Avoidance) hold, and if everybody does their planning properly, doesn't usually cause a problem.
One of the things considered is the ascent speed of the launch vehicle, as it's going pretty fast during it's passage through various altitudes.
HTH!
73, Jim KQ6EA
On 09/24/2013 04:22 AM, MICHAEL 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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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 [email protected] 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
Sent via [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
At 09:22 PM 9/23/2013, MICHAEL 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?
Sure. Those pictures you've been looking at are not drawn to scale.
The dots representing the satellites should be a lot smaller. If they were, you'd see there's a lot of "space" out there.
participants (4)
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Bryce Salmi -
Franklin Antonio -
Jim Jerzycke -
MICHAEL