WASHINGTON – A weather satellite that was in use nearly eight years ago has been deployed and contributed to the growing junk population in a major orbit.
The 18th Space Control Squadron of the Space Force said it was difficult on 18 March to confirm that the NOAA-17 satellite had broken up on 10 March. collision.
In a statement to SpaceNews on March 19, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed that the satellite had disintegrated after NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office was notified of the incident. “At present, the rubble poses little danger to the International Space Station or any other critical spatial assets,” NOAA said.
The spacecraft, originally designated NOAA-M, was launched in June 2002. The spacecraft was designed to operate for three years, but served in a primary or backup role for almost 11 years until NOAA formally released it in April 2013.
NOAA, nor other agencies, have disclosed the cause of the breach. However, NOAA-17 is similar to other satellites moving around the pole and interrupted. In November 2015, the NOAA-15 satellite broke out, almost a year and a half after a ‘critical deviation’ ended. Two satellites in the Air Force’s meteorological satellite program for defense, DMSP F-13 and DMSP F-12, broke up in February 2015 and October 2016, respectively.
The failure of DMSP F-13 was blamed on a design error in the battery of the satellite that also occurs on other DMSP satellites. These satellites were built along with NOAA-15 and NOAA-17 by Lockheed Martin.
When NOAA introduced NOAA-17 in 2013, the agency said it had carried out a “deactivation process” with the spacecraft. In a statement to SpaceNews, NOAA said the process includes disconnecting the batteries on the spacecraft, opening the propeller valves and turning off its transmitters. “These steps have been taken to ensure that the satellite is as inert as possible and that the risk of radio frequency interference with other spacecraft after decomposition is limited,” NOAA said.
These activities are among the federal government’s recommendations to passivate spacecraft at the end of their lives, removing energy sources that could cause explosions. “All built-in energy sources of a spacecraft or upper stage must be depleted or secured when they are no longer needed for mission operations or disposal,” reads the document from the US Government Orbital Debris Mitigation Standard Practices.
The fact that a satellite can still break even after best practices are followed shows the limits of these guidelines. “I have no doubt that NOAA did what they could, and think it’s rather a case of a heritage satellite designed in an era before we really paid much attention to the mitigation of litter,” said Brian Weeden, director of program planning at the Secure, said. World Foundation.
While NOAA said the satellite is not a threat to the space station or ‘other critical space assets’, it is in a solar synchronous orbit used by other weather and earth observation spacecraft.
Some of the satellites are not only threatened by such debris but also carry the danger of creating more debris. Weeden took note in January of a report by NASA’s Inspector General that found that two NASA missions in polar orbits, QuikSCAT and Terra, not only meet the 25-year threshold for disrupting spacecraft after the termination of their missions, but that it also poses an explosion hazard. due to batteries that can not be disconnected, or propellant tanks that can not be put under pressure.
The report found that ‘only’ mitigating ‘activities to prevent the creation of new orbital residues were not sufficient to keep the spatial environment stable. “To address the orbital litter problem effectively, global mitigation and strategic remediation efforts are needed,” the report concluded, recommending NASA to support active debris removal efforts, including funding technologies to enable such systems.
Weed agreed. “I would hope that this is another example of why the US and other governments should invest in active garbage removal options to take heritage satellites that were never designed to meet the guidelines for softening litter and remove it from their orbit. “