The End … or is it?
During my recent maiden deep sky photography session imaging Orion and its neighborhood, Two exposures caught my attention. There were meteor like trails bisecting the region between the Running Man Nebula and Horsehead Nebula. They did not look like airplane trails which have dots at periodic intervals besides what are the chances that two meteors were aligned? Guessing these might be from the same object, I asked my friend Andrew Klinger if these looked like Iridium flares which happen when sunlight is reflected by the satellite’s solar panels towards us. Think of it like a mirrored window on the building which flashes that annoying glare into your yes when you are driving along the highway.
Andrew said “Nice! Must be a tumbling satellite. Since they are lined up with each other and periodically reflecting sunlight. I’ve never caught one of those before, nice capture”
The Tesla Roadster with its Starman and Tiangong 1 the Chinese space station came to mind first and I had to find out what it was. I looked up the timestamp when the pictures were taken and using Stellarium, one of the best tools available for planning astrophotography, I was able to identify this object as the Globalstar M030 satellite.
Here is what I found about Globalstar M030
It was the 5730th spacecraft.
Launched: 10 July 1999 at 8h45 UTC, from Cape Canaveral's SLC-17B, by a Delta 7925 (Delta 7420-10 272)
Mission:
Globalstar M30 was one of a planned 52 (48 operational and 4 on-orbit spares) satellites in the Space Systems Loral "Big LEO" global mobile communications network offering global real time voice, data and fax, was launched on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral. The satellite was 3-axis stabilized and employed magnetometers on a deployable boom, sun sensors, GPS as attitude sensors, and carried two deployable solar arrays delivering 1100 W. The satellites in the first-generation constellation were designed to operate at full performance for a minimum of 7.5 years. The satellites in the system will be placed into low earth orbit in eight operational planes of six satellites each with a 1,414 kilometer circular orbit inclined at 52 degrees.
Later I found a NASA Presentation to the 51st Session of the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space United Nations which said that during 2013 four Globalstar commercial communications spacecraft including M030 reached end of mission and were maneuvered into high altitude disposal orbits. (up 500 km).
Where Satellites Go When They Die?
A graveyard orbit, also called a junk orbit or disposal orbit, is an orbit that lies away from common operational orbits. One significant graveyard orbit is a supersynchronous orbit well above geosynchronous orbit. Satellites are typically moved into such orbits at the end of their operational life to reduce the probability of colliding with operational spacecraft and generating space debris. Some satellites in low earth orbit are brought down and burn up to the most part in earth’s atmosphere upon reentry or are crashed in the south pacific in a region nicknamed “Satellite Cemetery”. Others like our friend Globalstar M030 are bumped up a few hundred kilometers higher out of way of the operational satellites where they will rest for possibly millennia. To keep them from causing harm like the one that gave Sandra Bullock’s Dr. Ryan Stone such hardship in the movie, “Gravity”, these satellites are “Passivated” meaning, all fuel is used up or dumped, batteries discharged and everything shut off and basically taken off life support.
So is this the final solution? It surely does not sound like it. It is like the spent nuclear fuel that is entombed deep inside mountains or stored somehow on reactor sites until we figure out how to dispose them. Some day these disposal orbits will be riddled with decommissioned satellites much like how cemeteries can run out of room. Until then we just kick the can down or up a few hundred kilometers.
The End … or is it?
During my recent maiden deep sky photography session imaging Orion and its neighborhood, Two exposures caught my attention. There were meteor like trails bisecting the region between the Running Man Nebula and Horsehead Nebula. They did not look like airplane trails which have dots at periodic intervals besides what are the chances that two meteors were aligned? Guessing these might be from the same object, I asked my friend Andrew Klinger if these looked like Iridium flares which happen when sunlight is reflected by the satellite’s solar panels towards us. Think of it like a mirrored window on the building which flashes that annoying glare into your yes when you are driving along the highway.
Andrew said “Nice! Must be a tumbling satellite. Since they are lined up with each other and periodically reflecting sunlight. I’ve never caught one of those before, nice capture”
The Tesla Roadster with its Starman and Tiangong 1 the Chinese space station came to mind first and I had to find out what it was. I looked up the timestamp when the pictures were taken and using Stellarium, one of the best tools available for planning astrophotography, I was able to identify this object as the Globalstar M030 satellite.
Here is what I found about Globalstar M030
It was the 5730th spacecraft.
Launched: 10 July 1999 at 8h45 UTC, from Cape Canaveral's SLC-17B, by a Delta 7925 (Delta 7420-10 272)
Mission:
Globalstar M30 was one of a planned 52 (48 operational and 4 on-orbit spares) satellites in the Space Systems Loral "Big LEO" global mobile communications network offering global real time voice, data and fax, was launched on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral. The satellite was 3-axis stabilized and employed magnetometers on a deployable boom, sun sensors, GPS as attitude sensors, and carried two deployable solar arrays delivering 1100 W. The satellites in the first-generation constellation were designed to operate at full performance for a minimum of 7.5 years. The satellites in the system will be placed into low earth orbit in eight operational planes of six satellites each with a 1,414 kilometer circular orbit inclined at 52 degrees.
Later I found a NASA Presentation to the 51st Session of the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space United Nations which said that during 2013 four Globalstar commercial communications spacecraft including M030 reached end of mission and were maneuvered into high altitude disposal orbits. (up 500 km).
Where Satellites Go When They Die?
A graveyard orbit, also called a junk orbit or disposal orbit, is an orbit that lies away from common operational orbits. One significant graveyard orbit is a supersynchronous orbit well above geosynchronous orbit. Satellites are typically moved into such orbits at the end of their operational life to reduce the probability of colliding with operational spacecraft and generating space debris. Some satellites in low earth orbit are brought down and burn up to the most part in earth’s atmosphere upon reentry or are crashed in the south pacific in a region nicknamed “Satellite Cemetery”. Others like our friend Globalstar M030 are bumped up a few hundred kilometers higher out of way of the operational satellites where they will rest for possibly millennia. To keep them from causing harm like the one that gave Sandra Bullock’s Dr. Ryan Stone such hardship in the movie, “Gravity”, these satellites are “Passivated” meaning, all fuel is used up or dumped, batteries discharged and everything shut off and basically taken off life support.
So is this the final solution? It surely does not sound like it. It is like the spent nuclear fuel that is entombed deep inside mountains or stored somehow on reactor sites until we figure out how to dispose them. Some day these disposal orbits will be riddled with decommissioned satellites much like how cemeteries can run out of room. Until then we just kick the can down or up a few hundred kilometers.