[AR] Re: India shoots down satellite, declares itself a space power .

  • From: Rand Simberg <simberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2019 10:36:34 -0700

On 2019-03-31 02:49, Uwe Klein wrote:

Am 28.03.2019 um 22:17 schrieb Henry Spencer:
On Thu, 28 Mar 2019, Rand Simberg wrote:
...nearly the most benign ASAT anyone has ever done.
While this is true, it's still not great.  In particular, it's *not*
impossible for a fragment from such a test to end up in a long-lived
high orbit -- rather less likely than for a test higher up, yes...

How does that happen without a second impulse? Another collision?

As Jon has already mentioned, just boosting the apogee can considerably
lengthen the life of a fragment, as well as exposing higher-orbit
objects to it.  A 300km perigee is not low enough to reliably bring
things down quickly.

Shouldn't all impulse changed fragments from a collision have strongly
eccentric orbits? "nothing stays in place and thus in that orbit"

Uwe

Y-Axis changes plane, X-Axis adds or subtracts energy (semi-major axis) and changes eccentricity by raising apogee or lowering perigee, Z changes eccentricity with no change to semi-major axis (both raises apogee and lowers perigee). But in order to get to a "higher" orbit (increase in both perigee and apogee) a second impulse is required.

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