Phobos/Grunt the failed Russian Mars Probe will reenter Earth's atmosphere sometime in the next seven days. Space Debris Experts won't have a good bead on the when and where until the last twelve hours of it's orbital life. News will be maddeningly slow to trickle in for the next six days or so...and Russia's holdover secrecy makes following Phobos/Grunt news even more cryptic.
When the orbital decay signals the satellite watchers that the end is but a few orbits away, events will speed up, and then news will seem even slower.
The latest predictions now say Phobos/Grunt will reenter January 15th at 1400 UTC +/- 18 hours.
Here's the online resources I deploy during reentry events. These served me well during both UARS and ROSAT reentries.
Twitter has evolved from a chronicle of Celebrity Banality, to the best Breaking News Service out there...provided you follow the accounts of parties close to the story, and waive off the Kutchers, Kardashians and Moores.
During the August 2011 Virginia Earthquake, the tweets about the temblor arrived in Washington DC before the ground wave that cracked the Washington Monument! The Epicenter was roughly 80 miles from DC!
My Phobos/Grunt Twitter Must Follow List:
@PhG_Reentry are the same people who brought us @UARS_Reentry and @ROSAT_Reentry Flat out, the MVP of Reentry Tweeters, and essential when reentry time nears.
@RussianSpaceWeb Russian Spaceflight News from Russia (in English)
@SPACEFLIGHT101 is the most prolific "Background Story" Twitter account to follow.
@universetoday is the comprehensive spaceflight, astronomy, and space history Twitter feed.
@SpaceflightNow nuts and bolts of all things spaceflight
Twitter will keep you up to date on Phobos/Grunt Reentry events, and many links to valuable resources appear in tweets.
Searching #PhobosGrunt will give you all tweets with the #PhobosGrunt hashtag, and it should be fast and furious as the end nears.
Real Time Tracking Websites:
Real Time Satellite Tracking shows Phobos/Grunt's location on Google Maps. The closer to reentry, the more compelling this gets, especially as tweets about live observations follow the satellite's orbital progress!
Heavens-Above will give you observation times to see Phobos/Grunt (or any other satellite you choose) pass over your location. It only takes a minute to configure your location and bookmark this site, and you'll get countless hours of skywatching fun in return.
Heavens-Above not only covers satellite passes, but Sun, Moon, and planet data, meteor showers and comets are displayed for your location. I have bookmarked three locations...Home, Work, and the Ancestral Digs. I've got the heavens covered!
Spaceflight 101 has a good reentry page.
The Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies maintains a Reentry News Page.
I just found CelesTrak.com with all the numbers...let's give it a look...
Tomorrow
We'll look at the Phobos/Grunt story from the beginning, and link the latest Reentry News...
Stay tuned!
Showing posts with label UARS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UARS. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Saturday, November 19, 2011
The Same Satellite Story, Only Different
So Russia's errant Phobos/Grunt Mars Probe atop it's do-nothing Zenit2SB41 rocket is predicted to reenter Earth's atmosphere in the next week or so. Following on the heels of ROSAT and UARS, this monthly Space Junk Fall should be "Old Hat" by now...well, Phobos/Grunt is a little different.
UARS and ROSAT were "old" satellites, dead and used up that orbited for a decade after their service lives ended before succumbing to the tug of Earth's gravity and burning through the upper reaches of the atmosphere to fall into an ocean...no Hard Hats required.
The Phobos/Grunt/Zenit package is brand spankin' new...but faulty. It launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome flawlessly on it's first stage, and inserted the spacecraft into a preliminary orbit. Two autonomous firings of the main propulsion rocket were supposed to send the whole shebang off to Mars, but something went wrong...no blast off, no phone home, no answer when hailed from Mission Control...uh oh...
Russian controllers have been trying to regain contact and control since they knew they had the problem...bad luck then...sorry 'bout that...
This reentry won't be a simple as UARS and ROSAT reentries...this package is still loaded with 8 tons of highly toxic hydrazine fuel and nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer.
Though I never thought to look for a Legal Treatise on Reentering Space Junk Liability, this time I found exactly that when searching the web for some Phobos/Grunt intel. It's an interesting read that I highly recommend. As much as I prefer to remain naive about legal stuff that doesn't concern me personally, I'm glad someone's doing the heavy lifting on this question. Here's the story from Space Safety Magazine.
The article cites a similar reentry in 2008. America's National Reconnaissance Office launched a secret satellite named USA-193 on December 14, 2006. Similar to the Phobos/Grunt event, the satellite was boosted into a stable orbit where contact was lost within hours. After much head scratching and behind the scenes diplomacy, when the reentry became inevitable in 2008, President Bush approved a shoot-down plan to destroy the satellite and it's hydrazine-filled fuel tank.
Wikipedia has a pretty good entry on the whole USA-193 saga. Amateur Satellite Watchers predicted the reentry window, and a missile launched from a NAVY Ticonderoga Class guided missile cruiser destroyed the USA-193 about 133 nautical miles over the Pacific Ocean.
Of course controversy followed...Russia was upset, suggesting the exercise was a test of the U.S. missile defense program. The satellite's destruction was only the third on record. China successfully tested it's Anti-Satellite Weapon in 2007, knocking out a defunct Chinese WeatherSat in Polar Orbit, and the US shot down P78-1 an American Solar Observing Satellite to test the ASM-135 ASAT Anti-Satellite Missile in 1985.
We've got just about one week to dispatch Phobos/Grunt. I'm pretty sure somebody will destroy the thing. It's loaded with 8 tons of the hydrazine/nitrogen tetroxide propellants. USA-193 carried 880 pounds.
CorduroyPlanet is on Phobos/GruntWatch. I'll post news as I find it until the bird is down.
UARS and ROSAT were "old" satellites, dead and used up that orbited for a decade after their service lives ended before succumbing to the tug of Earth's gravity and burning through the upper reaches of the atmosphere to fall into an ocean...no Hard Hats required.
The Phobos/Grunt/Zenit package is brand spankin' new...but faulty. It launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome flawlessly on it's first stage, and inserted the spacecraft into a preliminary orbit. Two autonomous firings of the main propulsion rocket were supposed to send the whole shebang off to Mars, but something went wrong...no blast off, no phone home, no answer when hailed from Mission Control...uh oh...
Russian controllers have been trying to regain contact and control since they knew they had the problem...bad luck then...sorry 'bout that...
This reentry won't be a simple as UARS and ROSAT reentries...this package is still loaded with 8 tons of highly toxic hydrazine fuel and nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer.
Though I never thought to look for a Legal Treatise on Reentering Space Junk Liability, this time I found exactly that when searching the web for some Phobos/Grunt intel. It's an interesting read that I highly recommend. As much as I prefer to remain naive about legal stuff that doesn't concern me personally, I'm glad someone's doing the heavy lifting on this question. Here's the story from Space Safety Magazine.
The article cites a similar reentry in 2008. America's National Reconnaissance Office launched a secret satellite named USA-193 on December 14, 2006. Similar to the Phobos/Grunt event, the satellite was boosted into a stable orbit where contact was lost within hours. After much head scratching and behind the scenes diplomacy, when the reentry became inevitable in 2008, President Bush approved a shoot-down plan to destroy the satellite and it's hydrazine-filled fuel tank.
Wikipedia has a pretty good entry on the whole USA-193 saga. Amateur Satellite Watchers predicted the reentry window, and a missile launched from a NAVY Ticonderoga Class guided missile cruiser destroyed the USA-193 about 133 nautical miles over the Pacific Ocean.
Of course controversy followed...Russia was upset, suggesting the exercise was a test of the U.S. missile defense program. The satellite's destruction was only the third on record. China successfully tested it's Anti-Satellite Weapon in 2007, knocking out a defunct Chinese WeatherSat in Polar Orbit, and the US shot down P78-1 an American Solar Observing Satellite to test the ASM-135 ASAT Anti-Satellite Missile in 1985.
We've got just about one week to dispatch Phobos/Grunt. I'm pretty sure somebody will destroy the thing. It's loaded with 8 tons of the hydrazine/nitrogen tetroxide propellants. USA-193 carried 880 pounds.
CorduroyPlanet is on Phobos/GruntWatch. I'll post news as I find it until the bird is down.
Hard Hat Time Again?
Wednesday I wrote about watching the Soyuz spacecraft launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in the former Soviet Union satellite state, Kazakhstan. I marveled on the bravery of the cosmonauts and the American astronaut in light of the November 8 launch failure of the Phobos/Grunt Mars Probe's Zenit-2SB41 rocket which launched from the same Baikonur Cosmodrome...and that blizzard!
Today, I found a new Twitter account, @PhG_Reentry that's tweeting the orbital status of the Phobos/Grunt/Zenit-2SB41 package, which is predicted to fall out of orbit in the next week or so.
Here on the West Coast of California we're having a hard time getting our "Rainy Season" started. World-wide, it seems like it's raining space junk!
More to follow...I'm sure!
Today, I found a new Twitter account, @PhG_Reentry that's tweeting the orbital status of the Phobos/Grunt/Zenit-2SB41 package, which is predicted to fall out of orbit in the next week or so.
Here on the West Coast of California we're having a hard time getting our "Rainy Season" started. World-wide, it seems like it's raining space junk!
More to follow...I'm sure!
Monday, October 24, 2011
ROSAT The Waiting Continues
NewScientist weighs in on ROSAT's deorbit. Satellite watchers are fairly certain that the German X-Ray Telescope splashed down in daylight into the Indian Ocean or Andaman Sea.
The article reminded me that USSTRATCOM didn't confirm UARS impact location for 4-5 days after the fact.
So, unless some debris found it's way to land, we'll have to wait until later in the week to hear anything definitive.
The article reminded me that USSTRATCOM didn't confirm UARS impact location for 4-5 days after the fact.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Here We Go Again!
Heads up skywatchers (and pedestrians!) Another pile of space junk will reenter Earth's atmosphere in the next 24 hours.
It's only been a month since the last satellite fell to Earth. I blogged about it for a whole weekend, beginning with "Up UARS!" on September 23rd, with "Tracking Error", "It's Late", and finally "Without a Trace" wrapping up the reentry weekend. I lost a fair amount of sleep waiting for that dead NASA Climate Satellite to come down.
NASA took it's own sweet time confirming reentry and splashdown in the South Pacific, east of Samoa.
Tonight's falling star is ROSAT a German X-Ray Telescope. Though it's much smaller than NASA's UARS, (2.65 tons vs 6.5 tons), larger and heavier pieces are predicted to reach Earth's surface because the telescope's glass and ceramic construction. The largest surviving piece is predicted to weigh almost 900 pounds.
I don't know who calculates the odds on these things, but they're worse than the odds of UARS hitting someone on Earth. UARS was 3200 to 1. ROSAT is coming down at 2000 to 1
ROSAT flies near the DaveCave this afternoon, fortunately at the current rate of orbital decay, it looks like ROSAT will come down in the Pacific around midnight PDT tonight.
You can follow along in real time on the internet. @ROSAT_Reentry posts hourly updates on the state of ROSAT's orbit with estimated time to reentry, and they answer questions to help followers understand the data. These are the same people that brought us @UARS_Reentry last month.
You can see ROSAT's position in real time at Real Time Satellite Tracking. To see when it will pass within view of your location, go to Heavens-Above.
Happy Reentry Watching everybody!
It's only been a month since the last satellite fell to Earth. I blogged about it for a whole weekend, beginning with "Up UARS!" on September 23rd, with "Tracking Error", "It's Late", and finally "Without a Trace" wrapping up the reentry weekend. I lost a fair amount of sleep waiting for that dead NASA Climate Satellite to come down.
NASA took it's own sweet time confirming reentry and splashdown in the South Pacific, east of Samoa.
Tonight's falling star is ROSAT a German X-Ray Telescope. Though it's much smaller than NASA's UARS, (2.65 tons vs 6.5 tons), larger and heavier pieces are predicted to reach Earth's surface because the telescope's glass and ceramic construction. The largest surviving piece is predicted to weigh almost 900 pounds.
 |
| ROSAT Germany's Röntgensatellit, named for William Röntgen who discovered X-Rays, and won the first Nobel Prize for Physics in 1901 |
ROSAT flies near the DaveCave this afternoon, fortunately at the current rate of orbital decay, it looks like ROSAT will come down in the Pacific around midnight PDT tonight.
You can follow along in real time on the internet. @ROSAT_Reentry posts hourly updates on the state of ROSAT's orbit with estimated time to reentry, and they answer questions to help followers understand the data. These are the same people that brought us @UARS_Reentry last month.
You can see ROSAT's position in real time at Real Time Satellite Tracking. To see when it will pass within view of your location, go to Heavens-Above.
Happy Reentry Watching everybody!
Friday, September 23, 2011
Up UARS!
There's space news this week! Sometime around mid-day Friday PDT, a NASA satellite the size of a school bus, weighing 6.3 tons, will reenter the Earth's atmosphere, begin to tumble and break up, and then burn up...except for 26 larger pieces that may make it intact to the surface. NASA and US Strategic Command who track these things, say the surviving bits will land along a 500 mile path. NASA and USSTRATCOM say the largest piece will weigh about 330 lbs.
As I write (5PM Thursday PDT), the impact track is forecast to be over the Pacific Ocean, east of the Philippines Islands.
From my viewpoint, this is one of those Good News/Bad News deals. The good news is those big chunks won't hit anybody (unless there's a sailor out there with really, really bad karma). The bad news is "you can't see it from here!"
As we move into the future, we're looking at a few more years of these reentering space junk episodes. Today, USSTRATCOM is tracking 22,000 objects in Low Earth Orbit that range in size from four inches across to the 900,000 pound International Space Station that's roughly the size of a football field.
Friday's entry in the Space Junk Derby is named UARS, the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite. It was launched from Space Shuttle Discovery on September 15, 1991, and decommissioned in 2005. UARS studied the upper reaches of the atmosphere with emphasis on the ozone layer.
More recent satellites now in orbit are equipped with reentry guidance controls, theoretically giving the satellite's minders some measure of control upon reentry. The next few years will see the last of the crap-shoot style reentries of these derelict satellites.
You can track the reentry of UARS at the Heavens Above website. Take a little time at Heavens Above to input and save your location data. I have bookmarked three locations at Heavens Above: The DaveCave, The Ancestral Digs, and My Mountain.This makes it a snap to find satellite passes and print them before I head out for the night.
I still get a kick out of watching the ISS pass overhead...I did see two Space Shuttle Reentries, thanks to Heavens Above, and I was able to see Russia's MIR Space Station and the Space Shuttle at the same time just weeks before MIR was deorbited. You can also find astronomical data on the Sun, Moon and Planets as well as comets and meteor showers. Heavens Above has printable sky maps for most observable events, as well as satellite pass info for radio hobbyists.
The internet is tailor-made for events like this one. All the data you need to know of, and view these global events. Even in today's 24/7 CableNews world this event is only getting cursory coverage. This is very different from the first major reentry of the Space Age...
I remember NASA's Skylab fondly, and remember the worldwide media circus surrounding it's reentry. The year was 1979. Being the first big satellite to return to Earth, Skylab was on everybody's radar. In San Francisco both daily papers held contests. The Examiner offered $10,000 for the first piece of Skylab delivered to the Examiner Offices. Not to be outdone, the SF Chronicle offered $200,000 to any subscriber who suffered personal injury or property damage from Skylab's fall.
On the fateful day, my girlfriend and I were in San Francisco. It was Wednesday July 11, 1979. In Union Square we ran into the LIVE Remote of KSAN the FM album rock station.The DJ asked the girlfriend where she wanted Skylab to land. She didn't hesitate to answer: "On the jerk who stole my bicycle!" The small crowd laughed and broke into applause.
Pieces of Skylab did land near Perth, Western Australia. The Examiner Prize was claimed, and a hunk of Skylab debris was displayed on stage at the Miss Universe Pageant which was held in Perth on July 20th. Wikipedia has the whole story and it's a fun read.
Reading the Wiki on Skylab raised some questions. Back in 1979, NASA estimated that the odds of a human being struck by Skylab debris were 1 in 152. Though I can't find the source I that saw this week, today NASA says the odds are 1 in 3200 for the human hit.
OK, I'm no math whiz, but one or both of these odds must be off. Higher odds in 1979 when there were 4.4 billion human targets, but today much better odds of a miss despite almost twice the targets- almost 7 billion people are walking around on Earth now.
Color me confused...now where's my Skylab Hard Hat?
As I write (5PM Thursday PDT), the impact track is forecast to be over the Pacific Ocean, east of the Philippines Islands.
From my viewpoint, this is one of those Good News/Bad News deals. The good news is those big chunks won't hit anybody (unless there's a sailor out there with really, really bad karma). The bad news is "you can't see it from here!"
As we move into the future, we're looking at a few more years of these reentering space junk episodes. Today, USSTRATCOM is tracking 22,000 objects in Low Earth Orbit that range in size from four inches across to the 900,000 pound International Space Station that's roughly the size of a football field.
Friday's entry in the Space Junk Derby is named UARS, the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite. It was launched from Space Shuttle Discovery on September 15, 1991, and decommissioned in 2005. UARS studied the upper reaches of the atmosphere with emphasis on the ozone layer.
More recent satellites now in orbit are equipped with reentry guidance controls, theoretically giving the satellite's minders some measure of control upon reentry. The next few years will see the last of the crap-shoot style reentries of these derelict satellites.
You can track the reentry of UARS at the Heavens Above website. Take a little time at Heavens Above to input and save your location data. I have bookmarked three locations at Heavens Above: The DaveCave, The Ancestral Digs, and My Mountain.This makes it a snap to find satellite passes and print them before I head out for the night.
I still get a kick out of watching the ISS pass overhead...I did see two Space Shuttle Reentries, thanks to Heavens Above, and I was able to see Russia's MIR Space Station and the Space Shuttle at the same time just weeks before MIR was deorbited. You can also find astronomical data on the Sun, Moon and Planets as well as comets and meteor showers. Heavens Above has printable sky maps for most observable events, as well as satellite pass info for radio hobbyists.
The internet is tailor-made for events like this one. All the data you need to know of, and view these global events. Even in today's 24/7 CableNews world this event is only getting cursory coverage. This is very different from the first major reentry of the Space Age...
I remember NASA's Skylab fondly, and remember the worldwide media circus surrounding it's reentry. The year was 1979. Being the first big satellite to return to Earth, Skylab was on everybody's radar. In San Francisco both daily papers held contests. The Examiner offered $10,000 for the first piece of Skylab delivered to the Examiner Offices. Not to be outdone, the SF Chronicle offered $200,000 to any subscriber who suffered personal injury or property damage from Skylab's fall.
On the fateful day, my girlfriend and I were in San Francisco. It was Wednesday July 11, 1979. In Union Square we ran into the LIVE Remote of KSAN the FM album rock station.The DJ asked the girlfriend where she wanted Skylab to land. She didn't hesitate to answer: "On the jerk who stole my bicycle!" The small crowd laughed and broke into applause.
Pieces of Skylab did land near Perth, Western Australia. The Examiner Prize was claimed, and a hunk of Skylab debris was displayed on stage at the Miss Universe Pageant which was held in Perth on July 20th. Wikipedia has the whole story and it's a fun read.
Reading the Wiki on Skylab raised some questions. Back in 1979, NASA estimated that the odds of a human being struck by Skylab debris were 1 in 152. Though I can't find the source I that saw this week, today NASA says the odds are 1 in 3200 for the human hit.
OK, I'm no math whiz, but one or both of these odds must be off. Higher odds in 1979 when there were 4.4 billion human targets, but today much better odds of a miss despite almost twice the targets- almost 7 billion people are walking around on Earth now.
Color me confused...now where's my Skylab Hard Hat?
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