Colonel Hogan
Madness
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2005
- Posts
- 18,372
Of course, if this is truly all satellites in a single image, then it stands to reason that if this image was shot in real time many of these satellites would be on the other side of the earth hidden from view.
Secondly, satellites in coasting orbits of the same orbital plane travel at speeds largely dependent on their orbital altitude. Objects in low earth orbit travel at a higher speed than those in higher orbits. Thus, objects in true circular orbits of the same plane will never collide because they are traveling at the same constant relative speed. Objects traveling in elliptical or parabolic orbits within the same plane could strike each other or their circular orbiting brethren, however, since the speed of these orbits vary as the altitude from earth varies with the apogee or perigee of the ellipse or parabola.
Finally, while the greatest potential for collision exists between objects with roughly latitudinal orbits and those of longitudinal or "polar" orbits, the risk is confined to the points where the respective orbits intersect. More significantly, the collision risk is also mitigated by the third dimension of varying altitude. Orbital paths of multiple objects can obviously intersect each other in two dimensions an infinite number of times without incident as long as separation is maintained in the third dimension of space. Which is why:
"The 2009 satellite collision was the first accidental hypervelocity collision between two intact artificial satellites in Earth orbit.[1] The collision occurred at 16:56 UTC on February 10, 2009, at 789 kilometres (490 mi)[2] above the Taymyr Peninsula in Siberia, when Iridium 33 and Kosmos-2251 collided.[3][4][5] The satellites collided at a speed of 42,120 km/h (26,170 mi/h)."[6][7]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision
