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Unidentified object floating outside station?


Waspie_Dwarf

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Unidentified object floating outside station? Sort of...

On the morning of August 19, NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy noticed an unidentified object floating outside the space station, near the Progress cargo vehicle. He called down to Mission Control Houston and took some video of it. Was it a UFO? Not really...Russian ground controllers identified it as an antenna cover from the Zvezda service module.

Credit: NASA

Source: NASA - Multimedia

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Wow. Couldn't something like that pose a real problem to the rest of the craft?

How did it get loose anyways.

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oh wow thats interesting, some one needs to get that! whos down for some space ball?

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Wow. Couldn't something like that pose a real problem to the rest of the craft?

Almost certainly not. Space junk poses a threat because of the huge closing speeds involved in a collision. In this case, as it is in an almost identical orbit with the ISS the closing speed is next to zero. Eventually it will just drift away.

It's not impossible that it could pose a threat to another satellite, but there is much more worrying debris in orbit.

How did it get loose anyways.

Zvezda has been in orbit for 13 years, experiencing the extreme heat of day and the extreme cold of night every 90 minutes for the entirety of that time. That a non-vital component has worked lose is not really surprising.

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It is truly amazing that we can track all the objects that may intersect our space missions . Hats off to all the Trackers ! :tu:

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Can't they just send something up to bat it away or something? Just kidding.

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Can't they just send something up to bat it away or something? Just kidding.

Actually that's not a bad idea. We studied firing the attitude thrusters to 'blow away' light stuff, but often it just comes back anyway an hour or so later.

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It will be great someday when we have the Great Space trash clean up Squad ! I would Love to Do that.

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It will be great someday when we have the Great Space trash clean up Squad ! I would Love to Do that.

Adopt a highway, adopt an orbit?

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