Satellite Selfie Shows Damage Caused by Mystery Impact

Earth’s orbit is getting truly crowded, with hoards of caller satellites being launched to abstraction and the remains of defunct ones floating around. A satellite’s caller selfie revealed unexpected harm sustained to its star panel, which was apt caused by an unidentifiable interaction that took spot implicit the past year.

This week, outer institution NanoAvionics revealed that its MP42 microsatellite autobus survived a deed successful debased Earth orbit, which near down a 0.2-inch-hole (6 millimeters) connected 1 of its star arrays. The institution discovered the interaction acknowledgment to the satellite’s selfie-taking skills, with the chickpea-sized crater appearing successful an representation taken by the satellite’s onboard camera this month. Still, NanoAvionics isn’t rather definite what mightiness person impacted its satellite. “We evidently cannot exclude the anticipation of an alien satellite-pecker, but our champion bets are connected a portion of abstraction debris oregon a micrometeoroid,” the institution wrote connected X.

It’s besides hard to pinpoint precisely erstwhile the interaction occurred. The past clip MP42 took a selfie was successful April 2023, truthful the orbital hit-and-run whitethorn person taken spot immoderate clip during the past twelvemonth and a half.

Despite the sustained harm to its star panel, the outer continues to relation normally. According to telemetry data, the interaction did not impact the satellite’s quality to make power. Although that besides makes it harder to fig retired erstwhile the outer was struck.

“Whether this interaction was from a micrometeoroid oregon a portion of abstraction debris, the collision highlights the request for liable abstraction operations successful orbit and makes america bespeak connected outer resilience against these types of events,” NanoAvionics wrote successful a statement.

There are much than 27,000 pieces of orbital debris presently being tracked by the Department of Defense’s planetary Space Surveillance Network, with tons of smaller pieces besides floating astir undetected. The flying abstraction junk has a hazard of impacting different satellites successful orbit, and things are lone getting worse arsenic abstraction becomes much accessible.

Earlier this month, a communications outer broke isolated successful space, creating a unreality of debris that grew to astir 500 bits of spacecraft hardware flying uncontrollably successful orbit. The International Space Station has had to transportation retired 32 collision avoidance maneuvers to dodge pieces of abstraction debris betwixt 1999 and 2022.

MP42 launched successful April 2022 connected the SpaceX Transporter-4 mission, a pathfinder ngo for NanoAvionics’ M6P cubesat level for assorted abstraction applications. The company’s satellites are equipped with propulsion systems for controlled deorbiting, reducing semipermanent debris successful space, according to NanoAvionics. Other companies should travel suit to make a cleaner orbit with little chances of collisions.