The US has condemned Russia for conducting a "dangerous and irresponsible" missile test that it says endangered the crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
The test blew up one of Russia's own satellites, creating debris that forced the ISS crew to shelter in capsules.
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"The test has so far generated over 1,500 pieces of trackable orbital debris and hundreds of thousands of pieces of smaller orbital debris that now threaten the interests of all nations."
Update: this video represents a simulation of the initial dispersion of the fragments resulting from the reported #ASAT test. The event has increased the collision risk of spacecraft in the LEO regime registered to #EUSST, hence impacting the safety of EU #space infrastructure. pic.twitter.com/iA3zRKNqr1
— EUSST (@EU_SST) November 18, 2021
One semi-serious kerfuffle in which nations (US, Russia, India, China, Israel, maybe Iran) start knocking down each others satellites and low to medium Earth orbits may be inhospitable for decades, if not longer. A whole host of satellites orbit in those altitudes, including the Internet service satellites being orbited. Debris collisions between crap generated from ASAT attacks will create even more debris as it hits other satellites.
We humans have a tendency to shit in the communal pond to spite others. Nothing demostrates that tendency more than the growth of ASAT weaponry.
This is a known known. The Russian test was a giant "fuck you" to the rest of the world. Some sort of global response would be nice.
5 comments:
This somewhat of a spat with the West
It’s really stupid if that’s their motivation. They have satellites in those orbits, too.
To elaborate on that, at worse the "Kessler Syndrome" could make low earth orbit completely unusable -- imagine resetting all of our satellite dependent technology back to 1968.
Here are two videos about a runaway, positive feedback Kessler event. One a bit sensationalistic but gets the point across, the second featuring Kessler himself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS1ibDImAYU&ab_channel=Kurzgesagt%E2%80%93InaNutshell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fajxaDxmu_4&t=0s&ab_channel=AsherIsbrucker
-- gray fox
Shorter links to those two videos about runaway "Kessler Syndrome"; the originals are getting split on my screen:
https://tinyurl.com/3wy4uvdr
https://tinyurl.com/2fprmrrk
I'm starting to feel like that goldfish I didn't always take good care of until my dad made me. Turned out it was easier to clean up the bowl and refresh the water than get yelled at. And so I learned to take care of my pets without complaining or slacking.
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