Russia to sink International Space Station in 2020

[GAP]

Russia to sink International Space Station in 2020
Article Link

The Associated Press

Date: Wednesday Jul. 27, 2011 4:08 PM ET

MOSCOW — A top Russian space official says his agency plans to sink the mammoth International Space Station in 2020.

Deputy head of Russia's federal space agency Roscosmos Vitaly Davydov said Wednesday that the station "cannot be left in orbit" after it stops operation.

He said in a web-posted statement that the station will have to be de-orbited in a "planned crash so that there is no space junk left behind."

The colossal station is the biggest orbiting outpost ever built and can sometimes be seen from the Earth with the naked eye. It now consists of more than a dozen modules built by the U.S., Russia, Canada, Japan and the European Space Agency.
end

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Wonder if they could hook a supply rocket to it and push it out of orbit?

 

[vonGarvin]

Wonder if they could hook a supply rocket to it and push it out of orbit?

If I recall my childhood obsession with the space race correctly, escape velocity from the Earth's Orbit is seven miles per second.  And that just puts the "thing" into orbit around the sun.  Much easier to slow it a tad, forcing it down, than to speed it up dramatically, just to have it remain trapped by the sun's orbit.

 

[Shadowolf]

Put it on the moon!

 

[GAP]

Why not remotely put it in orbit around the moon....until we need it..

 

[vonGarvin]

Why not remotely put it in orbit around the moon....until we need it..

We would have to still "escape" earth velocity in order to get to the moon.  Then it would have to be trapped.  Just put it in a trojan orbit around the sun, maybe.  And then pull it back in when we're done.  That would probably be easier.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

We would have to still "escape" earth velocity in order to get to the moon.  Then it would have to be trapped.  Just put it in a trojan orbit around the sun, maybe.  And then pull it back in when we're done.  That would probably be easier.

Sure, and next time it comes around, it'll be full of Daleks and 'You...will...be...exterminated'

 

[Kirkhill]

Lagrange is your friend.....

The Earth–Moon L1 allows comparatively easy access to lunar and earth orbits with minimal change in velocity and has this as an advantage to position a half-way manned space station intended to help transport cargo and personnel to the Moon and back.

L1

The L1 point lies on the line defined by the two large masses M1 and M2, and between them. It is the most intuitively understood of the Lagrangian points: the one where the gravitational attraction of M2 partially cancels M1 gravitational attraction. It is the only L-point which exists in non-rotating systems.

Note that the image shows the Lagrange points for the Sun-Earth System - but the equivalent points exist for the Earth-Moon systems.

Thank you Arthur C. Clarke (Fall of Moondust)

 

[Good2Golf]

Whatever is done, I'm sure it's best to leave it to the Russians, they're experienced at this kind of stuff*. 

Mind you, the West also conducted an analysis of dealing with such situations should they occur again (somewhat tongue-in-cheek anecdote here).


Cheers
G2G


* Cosmos 954

 

[57Chevy]

can sometimes be seen from the Earth with the naked eye.

8)
international space station locator
http://www.pbs.org/spacestation/seedo/locator.htm

They have wallpaper too  ;D

 

[vonGarvin]

Lagrange is your friend.....

In Sir Arthur C. Clarke's "2010: Odyssey Two", it was noted that Dr. David Bowman, Captain of the Discovery 1, parked the Discovery at the Lagrange position between Jupiter and Io or Europa.  I can't remember which.

 

[Lowlander]

So what's going to be replaceing it?

 

[HavokFour]

Seems like a huge waste of money after all these years to just crash it. Let's hope someone plans to make a moon base in the near future.

 

[Lowlander]

Well you never know I saw in the news about a month ago that really smart people somewhere had learned how to contain anti-matter, and with the way things have been going with the Navy getting new Joint Support Ships, Artic Patrol Ships, etc, the Navy may end up with a starship before any of those other projects.

I can see it now:  HMCS Enterprise (NCC-1701-eh)

 

[GAP]

Hey!! Here's where we could put it!!!

Trojan asteroid seen in Earth's orbit by Wise telescope

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News Article Link
28 July 2011 Last updated at 04:57 ET

Astronomers have detected an asteroid not far from Earth, moving in the same orbit around the Sun.

The 200-300m-wide rock sits in front of our planet at a gravitational "sweet spot", and poses no danger.

Its position in the sky makes it a so-called Trojan asteroid - a type previously detected only at Jupiter, Neptune and Mars.

2010 TK7, as it is known, was found by Nasa's Wise telescope. The discovery is reported in this week's Nature journal.

It is a fascinating observation because the relative stability and proximity of Trojans would make possible targets for astronaut missions when we eventually go beyond the space station.

2010 TK7 is probably not the rock of choice, simply because it travels too far above and below the plane of Earth's orbit, which would require a lot of fuel to reach it.

Nonetheless, its detection means it is highly likely there are other, more suitable Trojans out there waiting to be found.

The difficulty is the viewing geometry that puts any Trojan, from the perspective of an Earth-based telescope, in bright skies.
More on link

 

[vonGarvin]

Hey!! Here's where we could put it!!!

Trojan asteroid seen in Earth's orbit by Wise telescope

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News Article Link
28 July 2011 Last updated at 04:57 ET

Astronomers have detected an asteroid not far from Earth, moving in the same orbit around the Sun.

The 200-300m-wide rock sits in front of our planet at a gravitational "sweet spot", and poses no danger.

Its position in the sky makes it a so-called Trojan asteroid - a type previously detected only at Jupiter, Neptune and Mars.

2010 TK7, as it is known, was found by Nasa's Wise telescope. The discovery is reported in this week's Nature journal.

It is a fascinating observation because the relative stability and proximity of Trojans would make possible targets for astronaut missions when we eventually go beyond the space station.

2010 TK7 is probably not the rock of choice, simply because it travels too far above and below the plane of Earth's orbit, which would require a lot of fuel to reach it.

Nonetheless, its detection means it is highly likely there are other, more suitable Trojans out there waiting to be found.

The difficulty is the viewing geometry that puts any Trojan, from the perspective of an Earth-based telescope, in bright skies.
More on link

*clears throat*.  Did you see this:

We would have to still "escape" earth velocity in order to get to the moon.  Then it would have to be trapped.  Just put it in a trojan orbit around the sun, maybe.  And then pull it back in when we're done.  That would probably be easier.

8)

 

[GAP]

But....but....it was such a new idea for me.....please..... ;D

 

[GR66]

Russia to sink International Space Station in 2020
Article Link

The Associated Press

Date: Wednesday Jul. 27, 2011 4:08 PM ET

MOSCOW — A top Russian space official says his agency plans to sink the mammoth International Space Station in 2020.

Just curious...why do the Russians get to decide what happens to the INTERNATIONAL Space Station?

Maybe Virgin Galactic could use it as a hotel supporting its space tourism.  Perhaps run by the Hilton chain since their family already has a Space Cadet!

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

First of all, the Russians do not "call the shots", but they are a full member of the conglomerate made up of the NASA, CSA (Canada), ESA (European Space Agency), JSA (Japan) and the Russian space organization. So, they get a say.

And they are correct that  the station cannot be left in orbit: First of all, the station is in (very) low earth orbit and, as such, feels air friction and is slowing down all the time (thus losing altitude). As a result, small burst of correcting/re-accelerating power is applied to the station when it is visited by the shuttles or Soyouz's capsules. Thus, something will have to be done with the station when the program is over so it does not come down on peoples head or remains for awhile as space junk in the way of anything else that flies.

The station is too big to be pushed up into high altitude (geosync or past that). Older people may recall that the whole third stage rocket of  the Saturn V booster was required just to let the LM, the Apollo capsule and the command module escape from earth's gravity. The space station is at least a hundred times bigger.

You can't "blow it up" so it falls back in small pieces that will disintegrate on re-entry , because that would likely take years and years to occur and in the meantime, you will have compounded the space junk problem.  So the only logical solution is to use small rockets to bring it down in a controlled way into a largely uninhabited area, such as the middle of the Pacific or Indian oceans, as was done with Salyout and Spacelab before.

 

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

Additional on our friend Lagrange here:

While the various illustrations nicely show a Lagrange point between the Earth and the Moon, that point is constantly moving since the Moon revolves around the Earth in roughly 28 days. Therefore, to remain at the Lagrange point, you have to travel along with it staying on the "orbit" that would be described by the the integration of all the discreet Lagrange points. As this is an orbit that is about 7/9th of the distance from Earth to the Moon, you can see that once at the Lagrange point, you would have to travel at a tremendous speed to maintain yourself there - and that is discounting the fact that while supposedly at a neutral point between Earth and Moon and thus unaffected by them, you would still feel the constantly varying gravitational effects  on you of the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, you name it (General Relativity: everything effects everything else, all the time). Thus, you need some type of fuel and manoeuvring rockets capability to maintain yourself at Lagrange for a certain amount of time: "parking" there and staying there forever are not an option.

Those are the vagaries of space navigation.