Was it deliberate? When China's space station was hit, the International Space Station never appeared? When I introduced the Shenzhou-17 astronaut mission, many people questioned this issue.
I have never heard that the International Space Station has been hit, so why does China's space station have such a problem, and what is going on? In fact, this is completely a "misunderstanding" on everyone's part.
No, in December 2023, the news about the impact on the ISS also came, and judging from the disclosure, it was also very grim, from the X platform, the news disclosure note about the impact on the solar wing of the ISS.
Therefore, this also shows that this thing is really too dangerous in space, and it is a great threat to the spacecraft of any country.
However, the fact is also that there is nothing human beings can do, so why do we say that? Take a look at it step by step.
The International Space Station was hit!
Indeed, most people have heard about the impact on the International Space Station before, and most of them have been based on issues such as spacecraft and robotic arms, and there has been little information about the impact of the space station's solar wings.
When the mainland was carrying out the mission of the Shenzhou-17 manned spacecraft, it disclosed one piece of news, that is:
With the increasing amount of space debris, it is inevitable that long-term spacecraft will be hit by tiny particles in space. Preliminary inspections found that the solar wings of China's space station were also repeatedly hit by tiny particles in space, causing minor damage.
Many people have opened their brains and said where there is such a thing, which can be said to be okay if you don't know, just learn more.
At the same time, some people say that how could the Chinese space station encounter such a situation, whether someone did it on purpose. If this would see the ISS being hit, probably wouldn't be the case?
Not only the Chinese space station, but also the International Space Station, and the mainland has also publicly stated that the Shenzhou-17 mission includes the first out-of-cabin maintenance mission - that is, the solar wing of the Chinese space station was hit, and the repair is the mission of the Shenzhou-17.
Therefore, don't "don't know, just say no".
This time, about the impact of the solar wing of the International Space Station, there is also a detailed disclosure about the point of impact. Judging from the image of this sharer, the two large solar wings of the International Space Station were hit more severely.
In the first image, the ISS solar panels 3A, 58 (battery side on the left and Kapton back on the right) were observed to be damaged, and the diodes were disconnected due to space junk impacts.
The second image, an additional example of overheating damage to the ISS solar array, on the left, breakdown results in the loss of a wire on the solar panel 2A panel, etc.
Therefore, on the whole, the International Space Station has also seen hundreds of micrometeorites and debris impacts, and these two maps are relatively serious areas according to the description. No one should question the safety of space now, right?
You can think about it, it is really not easy for astronauts to enter space to perform tasks, they are really "aerospace heroes", they are everyone's pride, and they are really contributing to the aerospace industry with their lives, which is too hard, not only to perform various tasks, but also to face security threats from space at any time.
However, there is really nothing humans can do about space junk, and the situation will be even more severe in the future.
Humanity is powerless! Why is it more severe?
As we all know, most of the garbage in space comes from human space missions. With the continuous development of science and technology, there are more and more space launch missions, and space junk is also showing a "growth" pattern.
According to public information, the amount of garbage above the earth is indeed increasing "explosively" every year:
- In 1993, 7,700 pieces of space junk
- In 2001, 8,700 pieces of space junk
- In 2005, 10,300 pieces of space junk
- In 2013, 16,600 pieces of space junk
- In 2016, 17,700 pieces of space junk
By August 2022, the European Space Agency had regularly tracked and reported about 36,500 pieces of space junk.
In addition to the space junk tracked by humans, there are also a lot of space junk that humans have not tracked, this part is the most difficult, although some tiny particles are inconspicuous, but these space junk in space is very fast.
They all operate at orbital speeds and have huge kinetic energy (more than 7 km/s), and if they collide, they could seriously damage the still operating spacecraft and even threaten the lives of astronauts during extravehicular activities.
So, in fact, whether the Chinese space station or the solar wing of the International Space Station is hit, the most important problem is here.
This step of space junk hitting the space station may be "completely unaware", and only after seeing it later, will you know what happened.
And this part is powerless for human beings, the encoded space junk may be avoided urgently, but some unchanged or some very small space junk, that is, there is nothing to do, there is no way to do it.
Although many people have put forward some ideas, that is, by burning them with lasers and recycling them with nets, these are still in the conceptual stage and are very difficult to implement.
Therefore, in the face of space junk, to be precise, there is no good way to deal with it, otherwise the space junk we see is not an increasing trend, but a decreasing trend.
Therefore, in the future, as humans continue to carry out space launches, more space junk may appear, thus threatening the normal operation of some spacecraft.
It's strange, is the early warning system also a "collective failure"?
In fact, both the International Space Station and the Chinese space station have early warning systems, and whether it is the early warning system covered by the space station assembly itself, or the support of the ground station for space, etc., it is a "multiple" early warning mechanism.
After reading what I said above, most of the space junk can be monitored, and a small number of space junk cannot be monitored at all, even if the early warning of the space station's own combination is triggered, if there is no huge threat to the space station, it may not be a de facto orbit change measure.
And generally speaking, when building a space station, this problem must have been thought of, and there is no need to do special treatment for space junk that can be resisted.
Secondly, the most critical point is that there are so many space junk, and the space junk in the category of tiny particles may be hundreds of millions.
If you want to avoid every space junk, then it is completely too difficult for the space station to run well, and astronauts are trying to avoid space junk all the time when they are on mission.
Therefore, it is not the "collective failure" of the space station early warning system, and the strategy adopted when there is time is different, so don't think about it.
As long as it does not affect the normal operation of the entire space station, everything is not a problem.
Moreover, space maintenance is a necessary technology for a large spacecraft, and in the future, you may see a lot of space maintenance when you go out of the capsule, which is the general situation.
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