These days, people are often surprised by the news of the fall of objects to the earth.
After Tiangong-1, which crashed in the southern Pacific Ocean on Monday (2/4/2018), it was the turn of an Indian rocket that entered and burned in the atmosphere of the middle Atlantic Ocean on Tuesday (3/4/2018).
However, we really should not be surprised by the return of objects to the earth. The US Space Agency's (NASA) Solar Dynamic Observatory report shows that about 100 tons of space junk are burning in the atmosphere every year.
These rubbish are unused satellites, uncontrolled spacecraft like Tiangong-1, or the top of a rocket.
The majority of small pieces are directly burned, while the larger ones can reach the earth. On average, large space junk reaches the earth 50 times a year.
Indonesia itself is quite often the downfall of space junk. The calculation of the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (LAPAN) up to January 27, 2009 shows that Indonesia has 7,789 times the spatial debris falling over 10 centimeters, 3,388 times for satellites and 1,820 times for rocket bodies.
Fortunately, the earth and our homeland are the majority of the water surface so that these debris mostly fall in the ocean or remote places.
"Many fall in the sea, in the jungle, perhaps for the deserted areas falling in the desert," said Thomas Djamaluddin, as quoted by Kompas.com before.
Based on the record, only one person ever dropped space junk, namely an American woman named Lottie Williams. However, Delta II's rocket fragments that obeyed him were so small that Williams did not suffer any injuries.
However, it does not mean we can be careless. The military radar networks of countries in the world, NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), LAPAN, and satellite tracking agencies, whether independents or not, continue to observe objects in Earth's orbit. The information they get is then shared to predict the return schedule of space junk to the earth.
However, this is obviously quite difficult to do and often counts on estimates.
Holger Krag, ESA's Space Debris Office chief said, with the knowledge and technology we are attacking, we have not been able to make any definite predictions. There will always be uncertainty for several hours in all predictions - even within days of the return of space junk.
"The window of this uncertainty can be very large, because the high speed of the returning satellite means they (the satellite) can move thousands of kilometers in that time window. This makes it difficult to predict the exact location of the satellite's return, "he said.
To that end, ESA, NASA, Roscosmos, Cahadian Space Agency, Japan Space Agency (JAXA), Indian Space Research Organization, China National Space Agency and seven other space agencies joined in a joint tracking campaign organized by the Interagency Space Coordination Coordination Committee.
The purpose of this campaign is to combine tracking information from each radar so that it can be analyzed and verified together. Hopefully, this step will improve the prediction accuracy for the 14 campaign members.
After Tiangong-1, which crashed in the southern Pacific Ocean on Monday (2/4/2018), it was the turn of an Indian rocket that entered and burned in the atmosphere of the middle Atlantic Ocean on Tuesday (3/4/2018).
However, we really should not be surprised by the return of objects to the earth. The US Space Agency's (NASA) Solar Dynamic Observatory report shows that about 100 tons of space junk are burning in the atmosphere every year.
These rubbish are unused satellites, uncontrolled spacecraft like Tiangong-1, or the top of a rocket.
The majority of small pieces are directly burned, while the larger ones can reach the earth. On average, large space junk reaches the earth 50 times a year.
Indonesia itself is quite often the downfall of space junk. The calculation of the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (LAPAN) up to January 27, 2009 shows that Indonesia has 7,789 times the spatial debris falling over 10 centimeters, 3,388 times for satellites and 1,820 times for rocket bodies.
Fortunately, the earth and our homeland are the majority of the water surface so that these debris mostly fall in the ocean or remote places.
"Many fall in the sea, in the jungle, perhaps for the deserted areas falling in the desert," said Thomas Djamaluddin, as quoted by Kompas.com before.
Based on the record, only one person ever dropped space junk, namely an American woman named Lottie Williams. However, Delta II's rocket fragments that obeyed him were so small that Williams did not suffer any injuries.
However, it does not mean we can be careless. The military radar networks of countries in the world, NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), LAPAN, and satellite tracking agencies, whether independents or not, continue to observe objects in Earth's orbit. The information they get is then shared to predict the return schedule of space junk to the earth.
However, this is obviously quite difficult to do and often counts on estimates.
Holger Krag, ESA's Space Debris Office chief said, with the knowledge and technology we are attacking, we have not been able to make any definite predictions. There will always be uncertainty for several hours in all predictions - even within days of the return of space junk.
"The window of this uncertainty can be very large, because the high speed of the returning satellite means they (the satellite) can move thousands of kilometers in that time window. This makes it difficult to predict the exact location of the satellite's return, "he said.
To that end, ESA, NASA, Roscosmos, Cahadian Space Agency, Japan Space Agency (JAXA), Indian Space Research Organization, China National Space Agency and seven other space agencies joined in a joint tracking campaign organized by the Interagency Space Coordination Coordination Committee.
The purpose of this campaign is to combine tracking information from each radar so that it can be analyzed and verified together. Hopefully, this step will improve the prediction accuracy for the 14 campaign members.
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