Over the entire history of the existence of astronautics, 6,000 spacecraft were sent to near-earth orbits of different heights. Some of them disintegrated, others exploded, and still others continue to soar in zero gravity, having long been incapacitated. Once these "gizmos" sent the most important data to Earth, and now they are called simply: space debris. Any garbage, if you do not follow how and where it is piled, - after a while, it begins to interfere with the life of the surrounding objects. In the event of space debris, to threaten the working satellites.
Illustration by RIA Novosti. A. Polyanina
At the moment, 24,000 space objects larger than 10 centimeters and, presumably, more than 600,000 small debris are rotating in near-earth orbits. There are about 1200 functioning satellites, the rest is space debris. All this flies at a tremendous speed - kilometers per second. If such a small fragment hit a satellite, it would be like a head-on collision of two huge cars at a speed of 60 km / h. How to prevent such collisions? All that remains is to list all these objects in the catalog and monitor each one personally. This is what is being done at the Center for the Collection and Processing of Information on Objects of Technogenic Origin (CSITO) of the Russian Academy of Sciences - FANO at the Ballistic Center of the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics. The catalog of scientists now contains about 5,000 objects in high near-earth orbits,which are closely monitored. In order to uniformly observe the entire geostationary orbit, a huge network of observatories and individual telescopes was deployed on all continents of the Earth.
PM named after M. V. Keldysh. Map of observatories of the TsSITO RAN
Scientists of the Ballistic Center of the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences-FANO now have the ability to collect measuring information about space objects in geostationary (36,000 km above the Earth) and highly elliptical orbits (perigee in the region of low orbits and apogee up to 40,000 km), and also circular semidiurnal orbits of the Glonass-GPS type (21 000 km).
Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics. Telescopes of TsSITO RAS
Thanks to these observations, information appeared about a new class of objects with amazing characteristics: a very small mass and a huge area. Most likely these are some kind of flying films that are either formed during the destruction of satellites and rocket stages, or simply peel off even from working spacecraft. The result is a sort of "artificially natural" solar sail: a device that uses the pressure of sunlight to move.
NASA. Solar sail
Promotional video:
For more than 10 years, scientists at the Ballistic Center have been able to track the ballistic evolution of such objects, some of which, under the influence of the pressure of sunlight, either leave the geostationary orbit, then return back.
Explains Igor Molotov, head of the project coordination group of the NSOI AFN IPM them. M. V. Keldysh RAS:
Very large satellites and vehicles that carry radioactive substances on board are also rare examples of space debris. By Viktor Voropaev, Leading Engineer at the Institute of Applied Mathematics M. V. Keldysh RAS:
A separate scientific direction of the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics Ballistic Center is the study of the behavior of groups of space debris fragments generated by one destroyed satellite or rocket stage: how do they behave over time? These formations are called “clouds of fragments”. They can also be classified as particularly interesting objects of space debris. Some studies show that they fold into a torus (a geometric body formed by rotating a circle around a straight line that does not intersect it and lie in the same plane with it. The approximate shape of a torus is a lifebuoy, a steering wheel).
IPM them. M. V. Keldysh. Growth in the number of different space objects in catalogs
The number of different groups of objects is growing every year, both in Russian and in American bases. Since each such object can become a threat to a working satellite, the trajectories and time of approach are calculated, and then this information is provided to the operator. But, unfortunately, not every modern satellite is capable of maneuvering.
Anna Urmantseva
