WASHINGTON — A defunct army climate satellite tv for pc has damaged up in orbit and created greater than 50 items of particles, the newest in a sequence of comparable incidents involving that line of spacecraft.
The U.S. Space Force reported Dec. 19 that it had recognized a “low-velocity fragmentation occasion” involving the DMSP-5D2 F14 spacecraft. The occasion occurred at 9:10 p.m. Eastern Dec. 18 at an altitude of 840 kilometers, however the announcement didn’t disclose how a lot particles had been created by the occasion.
Two business area situational consciousness corporations, LeoLabs and Slingshot Aerospace, stated they had been additionally monitoring the breakup occasion. Slingshot, in a Dec. 19 social media post, stated they consider the breakup occurred earlier than 8:15 p.m. Eastern on the 18th, an hour sooner than the Space Force’s estimate, based mostly on monitoring from its optical floor stations.
LeoLabs, in a Dec. 20 assertion to SpaceInformation, stated its community of radars was monitoring greater than 50 objects from the fragmentation of DMSP-5D2 F14.
The 750-kilogram satellite tv for pc was launched in 1997 as a part of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, working in a sun-synchronous orbit. The spacecraft was retired in 2020 however remained in its sun-synchronous orbit.
DMSP-5D2 F14 is a part of a household of spacecraft which have suffered breakups in orbit. The F12 satellite tv for pc broke up in October 2016, following the breakup of F13 in February 2015. In 2004, the F11 spacecraft broke up, creating 56 items of tracked particles. All the satellites had a battery meeting with a design flaw that made them susceptible to explosion.
An analogous spacecraft design was used for a line of civilian polar-orbiting climate satellites operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The NOAA-16 satellite tv for pc broke up in November 2015, adopted by NOAA-17 in March 2021.
Many of these satellites broke up regardless of going by way of a “passivation” course of on the finish of their lives, which incorporates draining batteries and venting gasoline tanks. That course of is designed to take away power sources in a satellite tv for pc that might trigger it to interrupt up lengthy after being decommissioned.
Industry consultants have famous that the passivation course of is probably not totally efficient on some older satellites designed earlier than orbital particles mitigation practices had been enacted.
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