Comments on: North Korea’s Failing Satellite Could Ruin Space for Everyone

By: Lars

Lars — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 12:16:58 +0000

I’m pretty disappointed you just took Gizmodo’s crap and ran with it. Next time do some fact checking.

A tumbling satellite does not pose any additional risk than one that has passive attitude control. There are many satellites this size that do not have any sort of active control or maneuverability on them.

A 500 km orbit will decay relatively soon (probably in 10 years or less). I have a cubesat that is currently in a 700 km SSO and no one has written alarmist articles about that one not having and active control.

If this was in GEO, it would be a bigger deal.

By: DUde

DUde — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 22:31:18 +0000

Did you read the whole post Brad? It clearly laid out why this is a hazard and has some serious potential for trouble

By: Brad

Brad — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:35:36 +0000

This article is unnecessarily alarmist. While it may be “tumbling out of control”, it is in good company with 20,000+ other objects in the same state. It is still moving ballistically and is (apparently) easily trackable, so it poses no more risk than any other similarly sized object. If it was filled with fuel like the recent Briz-M that exploded I could see a reason for concern, but otherwise this is a non-issue. At worst, the headline should read “New North Korean satellite increases collision risk by 0.005%”