Solar Orbiter’s Solar Orbiter flies close to Earth through space debris

Approaching 460 km from Earth… Collision risk is low, but space debris re-illumination instrument

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Nam-seok Eom = The Solar Orbiter, launched by the European Space Agency (ESA), passes as close as 460 km to Earth on the 27th (Korean time).

It is the first and last close-to-Earth flight of the probe, which has been orbiting the sun and approaching its target orbit since launch in February last year. This will reduce the orbital energy, allowing it to approach a never-observed solar pole with an orbit of up to 24 degrees incline.

ESA said that the Solar Orbiter had to pass through a space with a lot of space debris in the process of approaching to 460km, which is about 30km higher than the International Space Station (ISS) orbit, calling it ‘ESA’s riskiest flyby’. materials to re-examine the

It is calculated that the probability of the Solar Orbiter colliding with space debris during its near-Earth flight is very low.

Compared to Earth observation satellites that orbit low-Earth orbit and maneuver to avoid collisions with space debris several times a year, the possibility is very low, but as it enters low-Earth orbit, it cannot be completely ruled out.

If even one collides with space debris, it can be fatal to the probe.

Space debris that collided with the solar panel of ESA’s Earth observation satellite ‘Sentinel-1A’ in 2016 is estimated to be less than 5 mm, but causes damage of 40 cm to the solar panel, and not only the power generation capacity but also the direction of the satellite. and trajectory were also affected.

There are hundreds of millions of such small fragments, and no one can be sure.

For this reason, they even went to the ESA Space Debris Room to calculate the probability of a collision by analyzing the Solar Orbiter’s orbit close to Earth and the location of the main space debris that is being tracked.

Such collision risk analysis was not performed when the Mercury probe Bepi Colombo passed Venus or when the Saturn probe Cassini Huygens flew close to Jupiter.

ESA emphasized that while it is still safe, close-to-Earth flight is still safer than in the past, ESA said, saying that there were less satellites and space debris in the Cassini in 1999 and the Rosetta Comet Probe’s three close flights between 2005 and 2009.

He said that when the Solar Orbiter goes out of a low orbit that extends up to 2,000 km and passes a geostationary orbit at an altitude of 36,000 km, it will be completely out of the danger zone.

However, he added that the situation of space debris is increasingly a concern for satellites performing low-Earth orbit missions and for spacecraft to be launched in the future.

ESA said that the space environment is overflowing with garbage because the satellite has been launched for decades without taking into account when the lifespan of the satellite has expired. The Solar Orbiter passes by the Earth, but the space garbage is a problem unique to the Earth we made. emphasized that it is ours.

eomns@yna.co.kr

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2021/11/27 11:38 Send