{"id":16502,"date":"2015-03-04T20:55:48","date_gmt":"2015-03-04T12:55:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/power-system-failure-likely-cause-of-military-satellite-explosion\/"},"modified":"2015-03-04T20:55:48","modified_gmt":"2015-03-04T12:55:48","slug":"power-system-failure-likely-cause-of-military-satellite-explosion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/power-system-failure-likely-cause-of-military-satellite-explosion\/","title":{"rendered":"Power system failure likely cause of military satellite explosion"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Artist's
Artist\u2019s concept of a DMSP weather satellite in orbit. Credit: U.S. Air Force<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The U.S. Air Force says a temperature spike in the power system of a nearly 20-year-old weather satellite may have led to the spacecraft\u2019s explosion in orbit, scattering more than 40 fragments of debris that could be flying around Earth for decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Flight 13 (DMSP 13) reached end of life Feb. 3, 2015, at 2:39 p.m. MST (2139 GMT),\u201d Air Force Space Command said in a statement. \u201cThe decision was made to render the vehicle safe after DMSP operators discovered a sudden spike in temperature in the power subsystem of the nearly 20-year-old weather satellite followed by an unrecoverable loss of attitude control.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Joint Space Operations Center, a military unit based at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, identified a cloud of debris near the satellite. The military\u2019s space surveillance network initially tracked 43 objects from the DMSP satellite\u2019s break-up, Air Force officials said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the initial response is complete, JSpOC personnel will continue to assess this event to learn more about what happened and what it will mean for users within this orbit,\u201d said Col. John Giles, director of the Joint Space Operations Center.<\/p>\n

Military officials will continue tracking the debris and issue warnings to operators of other satellites if they are predicted to pass nearby.<\/p>\n

The satellite was orbiting about 800 kilometers, or 500 miles, above Earth in a path that takes it over the poles.<\/p>\n

Space debris experts say DMSP 13\u2019s explosion is similar to other events that generate new junk in orbit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe event is not considered major,\u201d said Holger Krag of the European Space Agency\u2019s Space Debris Office in Darmstaft, Germany. \u201cShould the reported number of fragments stabilize at this level, we can consider it to be within the range of the past 250 on-orbit fragmentation events.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor our missions \u2014 with CryoSat 2 being closest to the event altitude \u2014 we do not expect any meaningful risk due to the event,\u201d Krag said in an ESA press release.<\/p>\n

International guidelines call for decommissioned satellites and spent rocket bodies to be \u201cpassivated\u201d when their missions are complete, a process that includes disconnecting internal batteries from the spacecraft\u2019s circuitry and venting leftover fuel and high-pressure gases.<\/p>\n

Built by Lockheed Martin, DMSP 13 had not yet been safed because it was still operational when it broke apart in early February.<\/p>\n

\u201cSatellite fragmentations are typically triggered by break-ups of tanks or batteries caused by remnant onboard energy sources under the influence of the harsh environment in space,\u201d ESA officials said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dispersion of the fragments associated with the DMSP 13 event is fairly large, however, and the largest concentration of fragments resides near the altitude in which the satellite operated,\u201d ESA said. \u201cThis is still about 100 kilometers above ESA\u2019s satellite constellation. The fragments will slowly decay over the years and decades to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

DMSP 13 was the oldest active member of the Air Force\u2019s fleet of weather satellites in polar orbit, and it completed more than 100,000 laps around the Earth since its launch aboard an Atlas-E rocket from California in March 1995.<\/p>\n

The Air Force said ground controllers moved the spacecraft to a backup role within the DMSP constellation in 2006, and DMSP 13 supplied weather data to support air campaigns over Afghanistan, during the invasion of Iraq, and the bombing of Yugoslavia.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are six remaining DMSP satellites that will continue to provide assured, secure, global environmental sensing data to our users,\u201d the Air Force\u2019s statement said.<\/p>\n

The most recent DMSP satellite lifted off in April 2014, and one more spacecraft is in storage on the ground awaiting launch when needed. The satellites are jointly utilized and operated by the Air Force and civilian authorities at NOAA.<\/p>\n

The Air Force is studying options for a follow-on program to continue weather observations for military purposes after the DMSP system is retired.<\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Artist\u2019s concept of a DMSP weather satellite in orbit. Credit: U.S. Air Force The U.S. Air Force says a temperature spike in the power system of a nearly 20-year-old weather satellite may have led to the spacecraft\u2019s explosion in orbit, scattering more than 40 fragments of debris that could be flying around Earth for decades. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1411,4058,2681,79],"class_list":["post-16502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-dmsp","tag-dmsp-13","tag-jspoc","tag-space-debris"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16502"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}