BS: Space Junk

Subject: BS: Space Junk
From: GUEST,josepp
Date: 24 Mar 12 - 12:00 PM

A piece of an old Russian satellite whizzed by the International Space Station on Saturday, forcing its six-member crew to temporarily take shelter in two Soyuz escape capsules, officials said.

The incident was the third of its kind in more than a decade of continuous inhabitation of the orbiter, whose first element was launched by Russia in 1998, the US space agency NASA said in a series of Twitter updates.

The Russian space agency said the debris passed within 23 kilometres (14 miles) of the ISS, forcing the three Russians, two US astronauts and a Dutch member of the crew to relocate to the two Soyuz capsules on board.

According to NASA, Expedition 30 Commander Dan Burbank and Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin entered their Soyuz TMA-22 attached to the Poisk module, while cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, NASA's Don Pettit and Andre Kuipers of the European Space Agency settled into their Soyuz TMA-03M capsule.

They waited for the debris to pass and exited to resume their normal duties, the US space agency said in a statement.

The Soyuz are attached to the ISS and used by crews either to return to Earth after their missions or in emergencies.

"The threat has passed," a Russian Mission Control Centre official told the Interfax news agency. "The cosmonauts have returned to performing their previously assigned work."

The last such incident was reported in June last year, when a piece of space junk passed within just 250 metres (820 feet) of the station.

Millions of chunks of metal, plastic and glass are whirling around Earth, the garbage left over from some 4,600 launches since the beginning of space exploration 55 years ago.

The rubbish comes mainly from old satellites and upper stages of rockets whose residual fuel or other fluids explode while they turn in orbit.

The Cosmos 2251 satellite whose debris passed by the station on Saturday was launched by Russia in 1993.

http://news.yahoo.com/iss-crew-takes-shelter-avoid-passing-space-junk-002447301.html

Space junk--it's not just punk rock anymore:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8jwWLAPyvg

Subject: RE: BS: Space Junk
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 24 Mar 12 - 04:52 PM

Designs of satellites to collect space junk are showing up. The debris threatens communications satellites, interfering with reception of episodes of situation comedies as well as more (or less) important transmissions.

Subject: RE: BS: Space Junk
From: bobad
Date: 24 Mar 12 - 05:30 PM

Space debris illustrated

Subject: RE: BS: Space Junk
From: Rapparee
Date: 24 Mar 12 - 05:52 PM

I thought this was about an old Chinese ship that had been found in space....

Subject: RE: BS: Space Junk
From: Gurney
Date: 24 Mar 12 - 05:52 PM

Just reading a book about the space programmes. Seems to me that quite a lot of the stuff up there is human waste, often in nappies, and frozen very hard. Ironic if cosmonauts were killed by it.

Subject: RE: BS: Space Junk
From: gnu
Date: 24 Mar 12 - 06:02 PM

When the shit hits the fan, Gurney?

Subject: RE: BS: Space Junk
From: Don Firth
Date: 24 Mar 12 - 06:35 PM

One of the first Apollo astronauts to "space walk" managed to drop--or let get away from him--a $500 Hassleblad camera. As far as anyone knows, it's still up there, orbiting.

I think this qualifies as flotsam or jetsam. Free to anyone who wants to go and recover it.

By the way, for some reason, there are some 12 Hasslebad cameras of similar quality still on the moon.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Space Junk
From: terrier
Date: 24 Mar 12 - 08:36 PM

.. and somewhere up there is Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper's tool kit that got away in 2008. I hope her lunch wasn't still in it :)

Subject: RE: BS: Space Junk
From: GUEST,josepp
Date: 24 Mar 12 - 08:57 PM

Camera lens mysteriously falls from sky, damages roof

By Rosa Golijan

It's a bird! No, it's a plane! No, it's ... a camera lens?
Imagine how surprised the folks in Petaluma, California must've been when they realized that it was a Canon camera lens which left a hole in a resident's home recently.

According to Mercury News, 55-year-old Debbie Payne's neighbor heard a loud noise near the woman's home a few weeks ago. When he stepped out to help Payne investigate the source of the ruckus, the two discovered that the roof of her two-story home had a hole and that two window screens were sliced open.

And the culprit? Why, it was just sitting right there — in the neighbor's driveway.

It was a two-pound nine-inch Canon camera lens — and no one knows how or why it fell from the sky.

NBC Bay Area explains that Petaluma police are attempting to track down the device's owner using its serial number and questioning whether it was possible that someone dropped the lens out of a plane.
It's worth noting that "FAA spokesman Ian Gregor told NBC he had never heard of a camera lens falling from an aircraft, adding that simply proving it came from a plane would be difficult to do."

http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/16/7796417-camera-lens-mysteriously-falls-from-sky-damages-roof

Subject: RE: BS: Space Junk
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 25 Mar 12 - 07:05 AM

...proving it came from a plane would be difficult to do.

Well, it's a cinch it didn't come from a UFO. It was a Canon lens and it's a well known fact that aliens prefer Nikons.

Subject: RE: BS: Space Junk
From: Fossil
Date: 26 Mar 12 - 05:20 AM

Atmospheric friction is capable of consuming quite big rocks (thank goodness), so the rogue camera probably didn't come from space. And if it was identifiable at all, it probably didn't fall from very high.

I'd be looking for hang gliders or microlights, hot air balloonists or parachutists, all of whom obsessively document their activities on film, sometimes under slightly marginal conditions. And switching lenses while plummeting at 160 mph towards Earth is a recipe for disaster...

Was it a long lens or a wide-angle?

Subject: RE: BS: Space Junk
From: beardedbruce
Date: 26 Mar 12 - 07:18 AM

Don Firth,


"By the way, for some reason, there are some 12 Hasslebad cameras of similar quality still on the moon."


Easy to figure out why- look at the relative value of a kilo of moon rocks vs a kilo of Hasselblad ( at the time, or even now) . Which would you decide to bring home, given a limited carrying capacity?